Day 167 - Posh For A Day

Author - Grant

From - Los Angeles, California

To - Santa Barbara, California

Via - Venice Beach, Santa Monica & Malibu

Miles Driven - 99

Today's Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157617090900337/

Let's get the bad part of Day 167 out of the way right at the beginning.  I spent the entire day humming the Britney Spears song 'If You Seek Amy'.  Damn that woman with her hypnotic baselines and addictively catchy melodies.  Aside from the soundtrack, however, the day 

was pretty awesome despite being nothing more than a travel day.  Our plan whilst traveling up the West Costs is to stop in every city, town, village, pueblo and enclave that might contain enough life for us to consider it as a possible living venue once this trip is done but in our heart of hearts we knew that today's scheduled stops were purely indulgent and frivolous as we couldn't afford to rent a garage in them, let alone the 3 bed house we desire.  Still, sometimes it's fun to pretend that you belong to a different world for the day despite pulling up to th

at world in a now rather dilapidated looking

 pseudo-mobile-home.

First stop of the day was Venice beach which, the more buff of you out there will immediately recognise, is the home of Muscle Beach, a 30 x 20 metre cage containing various weight training machines (I recognised them immediately as they were identical to the ones that I never used in my gym in New York) and a handful of glistening Hulk understudies.  The users of this gym are the living definition of irony because if you have the confidence to pump iron in this public arena then you have already reached physical perfection and hence there is no need for you to go to the gym.  Still, it's quite a spectacle and I have never meant 'no' more than when Kate suggested I go in and lift a few weights for fun.  I would have been felt more at home 

at an eating disorder therapy group.  The rest of Venice Beach isn't at all what I expected as it's like Camden or the Lower East Side but next to the beach as it contains some of LA's shadier characters and is lined with stalls selling all the tat you could ever want, and more.  The beat-nicks make for some awesome photo opportunities though so scroll through for more than the average number of drunks, hippies, freaks and weirdos rubbing shoulders with the trendy rollerbladers, surfers, segwayers and joggers that also share the promenade.  Even the beachside homes look a bit tatty at first glance but some concerted staring through their blacked-out windows invariably revealed plush palace after chic abode at great odds to their exteriors.  That'll learn us for judging books by their covers.  I just assumed that Venice beach is where the Beverly Hills, Bel Air and Hollywood residents went to get their beach time but it turns out that that place is Santa Monica which is a mere 3 miles up the coast.  Here there isn't a trace of a stall selling pot pipes (Kate told me what they were mum), the dreadlocked mafia aren't welcome and there is no pretense about the houses as they looks as incredible from the outside as they undoubtedly were on the inside.  The annoying fact is that the majority of them will only be used for a few weeks a year by their multi-homed owners...I'm sure we could work out a deal between us where we house-sit for them for 50 weeks of the year with the understanding that Molly will act as a guard dog.  Little do they know that Molly would only attack if the potential burglar was wrapped in bacon.  Even then, I'd probably be first to attack.

Thirty miles further north and we entered the 27 mile stretch of coast known as Malibu.  Trying to blend in here is like wearing a tuxedo and calling yourself a penguin - a valiant attempt but you stick out like a sore thumb.  Are these people better than me?  Yes.  Yes they're much better than me.  Regardless, we decided that we were going to have lunch at one of the restaurants built into the cliffs despite knowing that a side salad was probab

ly going to cost $50 and that our co-diners flip flops cost more than our car.  It wasn't to be, however, as we were traveling with Molly and California law states that dogs can't be present even at the outdoor tables.  Thanks Molly, you just saved me $300 plus $5 for valet parking in a car park the size of half a tennis court.  I really do love that dog you know.  Instead we grabbed some soft tacos and a fish burrito the size and weight of a brick from a take-away joint and made do with eating it on a bench and staring enviously at the various mansions wedged sporadically into the Malibu cliff-face.  Net summary of the past few days, if anyone says they live or have a home in Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Malibu, Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, Bel Air, Beverly Hills or West Hollywood...stay in close touch with them and never forget their birthday.

Our final destination for the day was Santa Barbara but more of that tomorrow as it's so beautiful that we're here for a few days and it deserves its own entry.