Christopher Rowe

Being our last day in LA, and having done the main tourist hot spots such as the walk of fame and Universal Studios, we decided today to take a leisurely drive through downtown Beverly Hills and head out to Venice and then the famous Santa Monica Pier.

Amongst being one of the more popular beachside cities in Los Angeles, Venice is also the setting for the TV series ‘Californication’, and after watching seven seasons of David Duchovny’s character play up in this place where the people are chilled and the sun is in a constant phase of ‘sun set’ – I had to check it out.

We parked the car in the beach car park, in front laid a long winding foot path, full of activity, to the left you had the Venice boardwalk and to the right was an amusement pier, from where we stood it looked like a smaller version of what I imagined the Santa Monica pier would be like, since we were heading to Santa Monica later on, we headed in the direction of the boardwalk keeping a look out for bike rentals – I figured hiring a bike for an hour or so would be the best way to see the coastline.
The Venice boardwalk was buzzing with activity – with all walks of life – a bit like Fremantle on a Sunday morning. Along the side of the boardwalk were a variety of small market stalls selling various art creations and other homemade craft creations. The other side consisted of bars, restaurants and a number of T-shirt stores. We finally came across the Venice Ale House, with an alfresco view of the boardwalk and beach it was the perfect lunch venue. We sat back in the sun watching the people of Venice walk by as we enjoyed a drink with our lunch. Everyone seemed so laid back and relaxed, it was a far stretch from the busy hustle and bustle some 30 minutes away on Hollywood Boulevard.

After lunch we came across a bicycle hire and hired two bikes out for the hour and cycled up and down the strip weaving our way past people walking, rollerblading and other cyclists. The sky was blue and the weather felt like a nice 30 degrees Celsius, it was a great day to be at the beach. Yellow beach patrol utes cruised along the sand moving from life-saver tower to life-saver tower -just as if it was straight out of a Baywatch scene (but without the slow motion running in the surf!)

We started to cycle closer to the pier that we first saw figuring, while we have the bikes, we may as well check it out and to my complete surprise (and somewhat disappointment) the pier we were heading towards was in fact the Santa Monica Pier. The pier looked old and tired, with a few roller coasters and side-show games that the Perth Royal Show could easily rival. I looked back in the distance back towards Venice – that was the real attraction!

With the sun starting to set we left Venice and drove to the car rental to drop off the car. With our flight to Tuscan departing LAX at 6am, I didn’t want to take the chance driving and doing the drop off in the morning – with no idea what traffic would be like it just didn’t seem like a risk worth taking.
As it turned out, the train trip back to Hollywood from LAX was interesting to say the least. Anyone arriving to LAX – catch a friggen Cab!!! OMG it was a dodgy experience to say the least – when you arrive at a station and moments after departing you hear screams ‘No – Please – Stop- Nooooo’ you know you’re in a rough neighbourhood. The only consoling factor was the further we travelled, the landscape started to slowly improved, we very slowly left the shadows of LA, through past the graffiti slums of LA to the stripper district, and then onwards towards LA. I breathed a sigh of relief as we passed the last of the graffiti buildings and stripper joints, albeit we were still the only two caucasians on the train, I felt a shit load safer.

We arrived in Hollywood some 1.5 hours later – again, I implore you – if you like having your worldly possessions and quite comfortable with the size of your bum-hole, catch a TAXI!! We celebrated our survival into Hollywood the only way we knew how, the safe confinements and guaranteed consistency of Hooters LA.. no joke, took about 30 minutes and two pints of Coors to shake off the shakes from that train trip.

Next stop, Arizona!!