October 9 - Santa Monica / Los Angeles, CA

cool sculpture, supposed to look like sand?

Santa Monica Pier

Weather – foggy/misty until about 2PM, even a bit cool, probably about 18º

Steps – 16,445

It’s official…last night was the longest sleep of this trip! By the time Chris got back from the football game yesterday, and relaxed a bit in the room, neither of us had it in ourselves to go back out. We weren’t really hungry, had some complementary hotel fruit in the room, plus chips and some chocolate and that was good enough. He was asleep by 9, I was out by 10! Then not awake until 7:30…glorious!!

pedestrian street art

It is baseball playoff time, and the LA Dodgers have a home game today we had planned to attend. We didn’t have tickets but had looked into them and were had fully intended to go. Well…having been in 3 looooong Uber rides yesterday, Chris was less than enthused…that was fine with me. I was up for going, but the distances here don’t exactly add to the charm of the activity – or the cost of them. We considered public transit, but that looked to be 2 hours each way!!! Nope…no thanks.

What we did do, was retrace some of my steps from yesterday. First, we fueled up with another expensive hotel breakfast – when we get the least expensive things

bluffs - bordering Palisades Park

 on the menu, no coffee and we have to pay more ON TOP OF THAT it’s expensive!! Anyway…by about 11:30 we headed to the ocean and the Santa Monica Pier.

solo jaunt

Monday morning, saw significantly less people out and about. Maybe the gloom and coolness also kept people away. Different from yesterday, after the pier, we stayed right, along the beach. Right along the beach doesn’t mean at all near the ocean…as I said yesterday…this beach is DEEP.

There were a few bars/restaurants we wanted to check out - but the cool weather didn’t motivate us to commit to anywhere. We found one cool place with low slung beach chairs right in the sand…we contemplated, but decided it was a bit too cool for beach drinks.

Getting from the beach up to Palisades Park was a bit of a hike. Palisades Park and the rest of Santa Monica is on a sort of cliff or bluff which we had to get to the top of.

Then it was through a bit of a residential area where everyone drives a Tesla (not really, but we’ve seen plenty) and into Santa Monica’s pedestrian only commercial street. Although not going to the Dodger game, Chris bought a shirt…a T-shirt for…$70 Canadian…sheesh!

Pier by night

We were again looking for a charming spot on this pedestrian street for a

refreshment, but nope…there were a few spots, but it still wasn’t warm enough. We weren’t hungry, so we hit a gas station for hotel snacks… peanuts and a Dr Pepper…Chris and Dr. Pepper…just so weird.

night cap

We always leave a tip for housekeeping and have recently started leaving a ‘Thank you’ note. I didn’t
always used to leave a note but left the money on the pillow. I figured this way they are sure it’s for them. However, once we left it on the pillow and they STILL didn’t take it…now we leave a note next to the tip. Today we got a note of thanks in return…how nice!

In the evening we ventured out for dinner and one last drink at our hotel.