We slept in because the Santa Barbara hotel was sooooooo nice and the shower was soooooo good. Like we gotta have one good. We grabbed some pastries at the continental breakfast and then took the hotel up on their complimentary bike rentals and hit the beach. Santa Barbara is a beautiful city with white sand beaches and gorgeous Spanish style houses set up into the greenery of the hillsides. It would be a nice place to stay a few days but for us it was just a convenient stop along Hwy 1. Off to Santa Monica for us.
The road to Santa Monica took us through Malibu and its pretty. About how you'd picture it in your head. Mega mansions set into high hillsides with panoramic views of the pacific ocean. Must be nice but that's not really our scene so we just shot on through. We arrived at our hotel around 2ish and hit the beach for the afternoon. The water was ALMOST.....ALMOST warm enough to swim in, but it was too windy and we would have been freezing coming out of the water. That's the thing about the Pacific Coast. It's water and beaches are some of the most beautiful we've ever seen and a swim seems sooooo inviting, but as soon as your feet hit the water .....no sir. Never really out of the 60's and the water in Washington beaches had to be closer to the 40's. That will kill you without a wetsuit. Ohh well, there's always another beach on down the highway.
That night we were looking around Yelp for a place to eat and found one of our favorite things. A ramen shop. Yuuuuuummm. The noodles were cooked to perfection. That perfect chewiness and the broth was delicious. Nashville needs more Ramen. Unfortunately we ate too much AGAIN lol. I guess all that time camping, eating freeze dried food and hotdogs makes us want to pig out when we get the chance to eat some real food. We gotta keep this in check.
The next day we woke up with one goal. Rent some bikes and ride down to Venice Beach and see what all the fuss is about. If you're noticing a bike trend here, you're right. Bikes are an awesome way to see a lot of a city for cheap and enjoy being outdoors without the hassle. Highly recommended.
As for Venice, what a cool place. Bustling with activity. Full of weird people, fit people, muscular people, homeless people, all KINDS of people. Unfortunately one of the first things Brett found was the skate park and it was hard to drag him away. There were some really talented skaters there and it is super cool to watch them do their thing. They make it look so easy.
After that we rode on down, did some shopping, went to Muscle Beach and just took it all in.
After leaving Venice we had a bit of extra time so we rode down to the famous Santa Monica Pier. The one with the roller coaster on it. When we got there we were more excited about the beach park than the pier so we hung around for a bit. Right there in the sand they have huge swing-sets. Ropes to climb. Long chains of Olympic rings right in a row so you can swing between them. This would be so awesome to have near your house. There were also some guys and gals bouncing around on some weird combination of a tightrope mixed with a trampoline.
Brett couldn't help himself and just had to get on the swings and swing super high to jump out of them into the sand like he used to as a little kid. This ended when on the last jump the swing caught his shorts and almost ripped them clean off right there in front of everyone. Man, if he had to ride his bike back 2 miles down a super crowded beach walkway with his bare butt hanging out......well, lets just say he would have never heard the end of it. LOL!!!
After returning the bikes it was time for a bite to eat and tonight it was sushi time. Can't remember the name of the restaurant, but they did a roll where they must have pan fried a square of rice until it was SUPER crispy and then topped it with spicy tuna and mayo and some Sriracha. Talk about delicious. Finally we did NOT eat too much so going to sleep would be so much easier that night. But before hitting the bed we decided to have dessert on the hotel rooftop deck and work on the blog. Shortly after getting started I (Brett) had to go to the bathroom. As I was returning Stephanie came running down the stairs with her arms FULL of all our stuff. "Brett I have to go to the BATHROOM" she yelled the look in her eyes was one of panicked desperation. "I ALREADY STARTED!" she yelled. As I tried to hurry her to the bathroom she looked at me with with terror as she started to squat in a bush right in front of someone's hotel window without even pulling her dress up. LOLOLOL. I asked her what the heck she was doing and insisted she run to the room. "DON'T LOOK AT ME" she yelled as she flew by. Poor thing. Afterward we laughed about it for quite a while before winding down for bed.