5.4.2012 – 5.4.2012  18 °C

I had a very interesting day to day. My day began with me shivering for almost an hour out the front of my hotel waiting for M&D to drive out from the airport. It turned out that my sat nav was on the blink and they had gotten lost in the concrete jungle of LA. Google maps and the trusty iPhone to the rescue and I lead them in a semi old fashioned way through the back streets of LAX to our hotel (reading Google maps and telling over the mobile to M how to get to our digs).

Eventually, they arrived and spent some time freshening up. M decided a snooze was necessary but D wanted to go out exploring so D and myself decided to head down to Santa Monica pier. Firstly, we had to work out why the sat nav was playing up! As it turned out, I had, had an email the day previously from TomTom telling me that there could be a fault with a new software upload and it recommended installing the patch. Patch installed and sat nav back on line!!! Phew! (could have been many arguments if we were sat nav-less…. how did we ever get on before the invention of satellite navigation???)

Santa Monica Pier here we come! The drive was pleasingly uneventful.. lots of traffic but no issues with us driving on the wrong side of the road (I guess D and I have had some practice in the last year so we probably should be ok!) The pier itself must be one of the more beautiful areas of LA. (If you haven’t been here before I wouldn’t say that LA is renowned for beautiful architecture or parks or…..) The shopping precinct (just in behind the beach) is a really hip area and the pier itself is modelled on the old style English piers (ala Brighton Beach). It was a nice walk out onto the pier amongst the energy and excitement of a small theme park and hundreds of tourists! Lunch was cheap but tasty Chinese that D and I shared and believe it or not I found a jar of Vegemite here in Santa Monica!!!! 🙂

We drove back to the digs via the Topenga Canyon which is this beautifully windy road that links the Pacific Hwy to one of the back freeways.. The road is literally at the base of the canyon with plenty of million dollar houses perched on the sides of fairly precipitous cliffs! Probably not my cup of tea, but I guess each to their own!! 🙂

The afternoon saw M and myself go for a wander to the local store whilst D had a snooze before we all headed out to discover Rodeo Dve and have some dinner at the LA Farmer’s Market in Hollywood. Rodeo Dve was a bit of a fizzer mainly because by the time we arrived everything was closed for the evening but dinner at the Farmer’s Mkt sure made up for it! Funny thing happened on the way to Rodeo Dve.. We had to cross this intersection that was two lanes running both ways… D decided that he didn’t want to wait for a nice gap in traffic and so snuck out whilst the first two lanes were stationary… once he snuck out he discovered that he couldn’t continue across the road and suddenly we found our selves parked in the middle of the road. All I could do was hide my eyes and hope no-one crashed into us… Pretty amusing! 🙂

Song of the Day Sheryl Crowe- All I wanna do