It's a California Adventure! (with added Las Vegas) Day 10

[Lizzybear]

Pre-trip
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9

26th September 2008

Up at 8:30 today (only took me until halfway through the blimmin holiday!) Had poptarts for breakfast then set off, in annoyingly slow traffic, for the Page Museum aka The La Brea Tarpits. It was only $7 per person to get in and although it was small we enjoyed our visit. You do have to pay to park but you can get a discount by having the ticket validated by a local business (seems quite a common thing in LA)

You can watch people restoring fossils and bones through a window

Tarpits outside, as seen in My Girl 2. There's a nice park in the surrounding area aswell.

On the way out of the museum I bought myself a cute little mammoth toy because it reminded me of the one in the game Syberia. We went to a local bakery to get our parking ticket validated and also bought a cinnamon roll to share for later (you don't actually *have* to buy anything but we couldn't resist! They had amazing looking pies but they would have turned to mush in the hot car) Next stop was Pink's Hotdogs for lunch, which is quite famous and very popular with both locals and tourists. I'd heard there always a queue and today was no exception but the food was definitely worth the wait! I got the chili cheese dog, Steve got a swiss cheese vegan dog and we shared some fries. Total for all of this plus 2 waters was $13! They could certainly charge more but I think one of the reasons they're so popular is because they've kept the prices afforable for pretty much everyone. Also the staff all seemed to have worked there for a long time and whilst they were efficient they didn't rush anyone's order. The location has stayed the same since the place was just a hot dog cart in 1939 and it's still fairly small so it has a nice 'mom and pop' feel. Basically a million miles away from McDonalds/Burger King/similar but around the same price! After our lovely lunch we drove to the Westfield Center as I wanted to visit the Torrid there and we both wanted to visit Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash which was a short walk away. Well, despite Torrid's location being listed on their website as well as the mall's store directory it was an empty storefront and had clearly closed down, doh! Steve had gone on ahead to Secret Stash (he finds accompanying me in Torrid about as much fun as a sharp stick in the eye and I prefer clothes shopping alone anyway) so I made my way over there. It's inside a DVD shop called Laser Blazer and is worth a visit for any Kevin Smith fan, I ended up getting Steve all of his Christmas presents there as well as a few things for myself!

It's fun to see all the props from some of our favourite movies in 'real life'

Hopefully we'll have matching pictures from Redbank next year (we're going to New York and Redbank, NJ where the 'east side' Secret Stash is located only about 40 minutes away on the train)

After spending too much money we headed back to the mall where I spotted a whole shop devoted to anime. My sister is a huge fan and this would be her idea of heaven so I ended up getting the rest of her Christmas presents and also her birthday presents for next June! Steve added another Kid Robot Simpsons figure to his collection which, appropriate to the Kevin Smith/Secret Stash theme, was a Comic Book Store Guy! Santa Monica was next on the list, or so we thought! For some reason i'd got an address in Long Beach so we ended up miles out of the way, which isn't good in LA traffic when driving 5 miles can easily take half an hour. At one point we were near LAX (airport) and ended up having to set the satnav to 'avoid free/highways' as it was much quicker driving on the ground level streets. We stopped in Venice to get petrol ($30) and, thankfully, we soon arrived in Santa Monica. We paid the $8 (!) parking and wandered along the pier and Pacific Park for a bit.

Getting ready to ride the big wheel, pretty reasonable at $3 a person and you get quite a long time on it aswell

Lovely view

Who's having fun?!

 

[Lizzybear]

I wanted to walk along the beach, much to Steve's disdain (the sand thing remember!) It was much rougher sand than Santa Barbara but a nice walk nonetheless.

By now we were hungry enough for dinner so we walked to Buca Di Beppo. Most of the dishes here are to serve 2+ or 4+ and that plus is certainly accurate! We only ate half of our eggplant parmigan and fettucine alfredo (Steve enjoyed the rest for lunch the next day) which may have partly been down to the awesome cheesy garlic bread starter! I managed to knock over my water in my enthusiasm to watch the presidential debate which was on TV at the time (most of the staff were glued to it aswell, Santa Monica being as liberal as it is you can imagine who most of them were rooting for!) The server was very nice about it but for my clumsiness I tipped extra and the bill was $50.

Just before we left Santa Monica the sun was setting which was quite spectacular to watch, the picture doesn't really capture it

After dinner we walked back to the car and drove in the heavy traffic (where are all these people going at 8pm on a Sunday?!) back to the hotel. We hadn't managed to visit the Disney Soda Shop as yet so of course this had to be rectified! It was walking distance from the hotel so we made our way over and shared a Pin Trader's Sundae.

Comes with a pin AND you can choose your ice-cream flavours

I also bought myself 3 more pins which were exclusive to the shop. After 'dessert' we walked over to the Hollywood & Highland mall where I bought a Harajuku Lovers perfume from Sephora and Steve got a book from Virgin before returning to the hotel.

 

[Minniespal]

Another great report with lovely photos.

 

[mark&sue]

great photos. we stayed in santa monica a while back and brings back good memories.



Susan

 

[jjk]

fantastic photos

 

[florida sun]

Another great report Lizzy, your photos are brilliant

 

[natalielongstaff]

lovely sundae

 

[cap'njack.]

I love the sunrise picture...amazing

 

[SusanEllen]

Glad you saw the Page Museum/La Brea Tar Pits. You are the first DISer I've read who made it there. It's one of the oldest tourist spots in LA and especially intriguing that it's an actual scientific research site and right in the middle of the high rent office and fancy/schmancy art museum district. Did the docent tell you that the tar-like stuff still oozes into the basements of the surrounding office buildings?

An extra thank you for including the photos of Pacific Park in Santa Monica. It's certainly easy to see that park's influence on the Imagineers when they were designing Paradise Pier for DCA. BTW, I hope you took lots of photos of Paradise Pier for historical purposes because our DCA segway guide told us that it's all going to be changed in the 1.6 billion dollar California Adventure do-over. Seaside tacky will be out and overly decorative Victorian will be in (at least that's most recent rumor).