Back to sunny California! briefly.
Sunday, day 4
On Sunday morning, Meri and I tracked down how to get to a church that is in fellowship with (the same flavor as) ours. It turned out, with the lack of Sunday morning traffic, the drive was only 30 minutes or so! cool...
The pastor and his family were super nice and offered to help Meri with anything she needs when she moves to L.A. And they have two adorable little girls so Meri will get her daycare fix. The service was bi-lingual so the Pastor repeated the entire sermon, paragraph by paragraph into Spanish. Amazing! Too bad I didn't understand that part, but if I was trying to become fluent in Spanish, this would be the place!
Afterwards, we drove to Venice and found the house (well, the area) where Abby was staying. The house where she's staying is behind another one and we thought we were lost for a bit. We stowed the fabric that we wanted her to bring back with her in the trunk of her car and then we set out.
Lunch at a BBQ place in Venice which had this fabric store right across the street! Since I'd blown my fabric budget already two days earlier, we didn't even go in. Just admired from our restaurant.
The three of us drove through the Venice canals, which are beautiful!
We drove through them several times, because we kept taking a wrong turn.
After speaking with my dad later, he said that he'd been to the canals a LOT when he was in the Marines. He was stationed near here and an aunt and uncle lived nearby so he'd visit them on his days off.
I gave the girls an address of a beautiful house that we'd see and they'd look it up on Zillow.com to tell us how much it last sold for. WOWZA, I can not ever afford to live on the canal!!!
Then we drove down into Malibu and I got to see where Malibu Barbie and all her friends live. And probably where 2.5 men live. More expensive houses...
We stopped on the scenic area on Malibu beach and took some pics.
Location location location!
Public restrooms are scarce! But we looked desperate enough for a Mexican restaurant to let us use their facilities. Yep - we'll buy some pop there! Then we headed to the beach!
It was cold! Not Iowa cold... but cold enough to wear a jacket and bristle in the wind. Due to the chill of *gasp* 45 degrees, there were NO muscle bound men on Muscle Beach. shoot. I guess they're weenies.
We walked along the Venice boardwalk, after the girls raided the candy store on the corner of course... Then we cut out onto the beach and saw the sights.
What silly people to surf in this chill! BURR! Not Iowa BURR, but still BURR none the less.
The birds were fun to watch and I have more than a healthy amount of photos of this particular one so I could get this photo! He kept running away from me...
Meri talked me into buying her a sweatshirt to commemorate the day. I'll never get to wear it...
On the way back to Abby's, she directed us down some side streets to a swanky little street where everything in the shops cost more than my house. A block away, we drove past a beautiful Ferrari stopped at a stop sign. We gawked and pointed and as soon as we were past, they peeled out.
Cue rolling eyes on our part and saying out loud, "Daddy's Car..."
After that, we took Abby home and headed off ourselves. It was an hour's worth of a drive back, and Meri wanted to see the Universal street all lit up at night. We found it, but yikes. While the street walk would have been great, finding parking and a shuttle to see it would have been a nightmare. Meri was disappointed but she's the one who said "nevermind". But while we were on that side of the city, I suggested driving out to the Hollywood sign. She was all for it!
I'm guessing the stars of LaLaLand were flown out to it on a helicopter. No way did they drive up windy tiny streets lined with houses full of angry people and next to no parking to reach it, as we did. We drove and drove and was reminiscent of our ascent to Jerome, AZ, where Robb couldn't see the road on the other side of the hood of the car. Yikes, it was scary! BUT we made it to the dead end and parallel parked next to someone's bedroom window. The houses seriously line the streets. I could have knocked on their window for a glass of water! But I didn't.
The road below was tame compared to what we drove up.
We walked as far as we could but then thoughts of public restrooms filled our heads again so we took our obligatory photos and headed back.
I should have brought a hairbrush with me...
and a makeup artist.
Then we stopped for a pizza on our way back to the hotel. I don't even think there was meat on this one... But it was good and I got full, so that's what counts.
Another great day of our vacation!
And there was still more to go...
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