Huxwolds California Dreaming (Aug 23) - Day 12: Venice Beach & Santa Monica Pier

[HEMANCLOFTY]

Huxwolds California Dreaming (Aug 23)
Day 12: Venice Beach & Santa Monica Pier (Tues 29/08)

Index
Day 11: Burbank Shopping & Moving to Hollywood Boulevard

NB - my trippie notes for today were written almost 2 weeks later, so are based on photos, receipts and memory

I think I slept through (or only briefly woke) during the night, as there are no screenshot time stamps on my phone to indicate otherwise.

I was up by 7:25 according to my first pics of the day, which was of the view from our room…

Sooty was fine…

I made myself a coffee and had an apple Danish to tide me over until we got to Blue Star Donuts, which was our breakfast of choice in Venice…

9:20 - We were all showered / dressed and ready to go. I was actually wearing shorts instead of cropped leggings today…

I took a couple of pics outside the hotel whilst Rich and Tom had their smoke / vape. I still hadn’t realised that the Hollywood sign was in view at this point…

It was going to be a bit cooler on the coast today…

Rich and Tom popped across the road to 7Eleven to get some drinks and came back with a Chicken Taquita and a Buffalo Roller (Approx $13)…

The chicken one was ok, but it was a bit the other was too spicy for me, plus it was a bit too early for savoury food.

It took a few mins for Uber to connect us to a driver. I was just looking on Lyft when Uber pinged to confirm our trip and it finally arrived about 15 mins later just before 10am.

I realised just as we were pulling out that I’d forgotten to put the power bank and cable in my bag. I was already down to 80% phone battery (Uber really drains the battery), so would have to ration my phone camera and use the normal camera today. Tom told me to turn my data off, and I put my phone on battery saver mode which really helped too.

It took 50 mins to get to Venice - Tom had a little doze.

There wasn’t much to see / take pics of on the way…

We did see a lot of unhoused people, tent encampments under bridges and cars and RVs with no wheels being used as shelters 🥲

The Uber was $33.91 (I forgot to tip when I put my data back on).

I’d put in our drop off point as one end of Albert Kinney Boulevard, which is a trendy shopping street that we’d discovered on a Yellow Productions VLOG (I definitely recommend checking out this guy for LA tips and planning)…

The plan was to start with Blue Star Donuts, then mooch along the shops towards the canals, and then pop out onto the beach for our walk up to Santa Monica Pier.

Unfortunately Blue Star Donuts was closed, with a sign in the window advising the team had gone to the beach for the day…

11:00 - We topped up our sun spray and mooched our way up Albert Kinney Boulevard. We didn’t end up going in any of the stores, but it was a nice walk up, and there were lots of unique store designs and a few arty bits to see along the way…

When we reached the corner of Albert Kinney & Venice Boulevard, I stopped to do a quick Google Maps to check the route to the canals…

We walked down Venice Boulevard and across the road. There was a little shady spot called Corner Ball Park which was a homage to the Venice Tigers baseball team…

Then we popped into a quirky little store called The Canal Market for a mooch…

11:25 - we crossed over another road, then cut down a side street into the canals area…

We started off walking down 3/4 of the Carroll L Canal, then crossed the bridge and walked back up the Linnie canal, enjoying mooching at all of the properties and bridges, and taking lots of pics…

More pics…

We googled to double check which bridge was used in a scene on Nightmare on Elm Street…

It was the centre bridge on the Eastern Canal, so we took a few pics there too and chilled for a few mins…

We decided we didn’t need to do all four canals (as they were very similar) and picked Howland to walk down towards the beach. We then had to walk a little bit across the Grand canal, then crossed over our final bridge and down a cut through path out our the canals area…

The path was painted in rainbow colours (I think it was called the Pride Path)…

There was a chalkboard that we stopped and added #huxwoldsontour and a couple of other bits to…

I can’t remember what Tom’s RDJ message meant - it was probably just random…

12:00 - We arrived at the beach, which was just north of the Venice Pier and signposted as a quiet / residential area.

We took a few pics - the first one was an accident as I didn’t realise Tom and Rich were in shot, but it came out fab…

…then started our walk North up the Boardwalk…

By 12:15 we had hit the “tacky” part of the Boardwalk, which was exactly as we expected - like a sunny Blackpool promenade…

A few mins later, we were at Mr Charlie’s, a vegan place which we’d seen on Vlogs but hadn’t put on the A-list as we already had a few food options on the plan for today…

As we’d missed out on our Donuts, and Tom and I were quite peckish, we decided to get a Frowny Meal to share. We thought this was just nuggets and fries, but we also got a plant based Cheeseburger, and a bottle of Coke ($21.15).

We sat in the seating area to wait for it to cook and were grateful for the shade. There was a dog under the seats enjoying the shade too…

The food was really good, and Rich ended up having a little bit too. It was just enough to keep us ticking over.

We walked past Muscle Beach…

We braved the public loos (I hovered)…

NB - We’ve since seen a German In Venice (GiV) VLOG, showing how these loos are regularly used by the unhoused community for sleeping overnight 🥲

Tom popped into one of the souvenir stores whilst Rich and I walked up Winward Avenue to see the Venice sign…

We met back up with Tom on the way back to the Boardwalk. There was a nice looking coffee shop…

It was too hot for a Cappuccino so I thought I’d try a Cold Brew as I’d enjoyed the one in Disney last week…

I think it was about $7. I asked for some sweeteners and the barista put some syrup in it, but it was still very strong and I had to go back for some sugar. I put about 4 packets in but it all just settled at the bottom of the cup. After a lot of stirring and about 5 mins, it was finally drinkable, but I wouldn’t have another one.

Not surprisingly, we saw lots of unhoused people on the Boardwalk. One guy was just sat on the floor with blood dripping from his face and it looked like a big chunk of skin flapping. A police / security officer was talking to him and he kept insisting he was ok.

We’d been watching quite a few GiV Vlogs before our trip and he has a store here, but it was closed today (I think he only opens on weekends)…

We watched the skateboarders for a few mins. There were some teenagers that were quite good, and it was nice to see everyone cheering when they made a difficult trick…

There were rollerbladers and loads of cyclists too.

The surroundings started to get a bit nicer as we were approaching the Venice / Santa Monica city limits…

1:35 - We crossed over the city line…

It was more residential / hotels from this point on. We could see the Pier in the distance now too…

2:10 - We stopped at the original Muscle Beach area and sat / played on the swings for a few minutes…

I asked Tom if he was going to have a go at climbing the rope and found it he’d never done that in school.

Now that the bulk of the walking was done, I swapped my trainers for flip flops, and it was nice to get some air on my feet.

10 mins later, we made it to Hot Dog on a Stick, which was on our A-List. We decided to share a Turkey Corndog and a Frozen Lemonade, but they were sold out of Lemondade so we just had the Corn Dog ($6.25)…

We sat on the steps of the pier to eat. It was ok. Not as good (or big) as the one at Downtown Disney, but ok for the cost. In hindsight we should’ve gone for the Beef one.

I checked my setup counter and we’d done 14,287 steps / 8.9km already today 👣

2:35 - We headed onto the Pier for a mooch…

We got a couple of Cokes to share (no receipt) and took some pics by the End of Route 66 sign…

I took some pics of the beach…

We also watched a someone doing the hanging bar challenge, (he won) and then carried on mooching up to the end of the Pier…

We went in the souvenir shop at the end of the pier and I got a magnet, which I think was $3…

3:00 - We we’re all hot and tired and neither Rich nor Tom were bothered about doing the rollercoaster (which was $12 each), so we just mooched through the fairground area, stopped to use the loos and for me to cool off my feet under the shower tap.

I had originally wanted to have a quick paddle in the sea after the pier, but as we were all so hot and tired I decided I didn’t have the energy.

We took a final couple of pics on the pier…

Then walked up past Palisades Park to get our Uber….

As the curbs were all red here, we knew an Uber wouldn’t be able to stop, so we carried on walking to the shopping area, as we were also in search of a cold drink…

3:25 - We didn’t find anywhere to buy a drink, but we couldn’t be bothered to walk anymore, so just ordered our Uber from outside the Nike Store.

The a/c in the car was much needed. The driver played some weird semi chilled dance music all the way back to Hollywood, but Tom still managed to doze off.

At 3:50 I saw some sky scraper buildings and one looked liked Nakatami / Fox Plaza, so I Googled and it was, so I took a few pics…

Tom missed it as he was dozing, but now I knew what it looked like I realised we could see it from our hotel room (which was good as we didn’t have time to visit in the end)…

Rubbish pic of Trejo’s Donuts (which was on the A-List, but we ran out of time)…

There was quite a lot of traffic on the way back, so it was 4:40 by the time we got to the hotel. The Uber was $40.99 + $6.14 / 15% tip.

We had a chill out / socials catch-up and decided that we would go to Trejo’s Cantina for dinner, then walk to the Happy Days House as both were on La Cahuenga . I found a good movie locations map, and found out that some Roger Rabbit scenes were filmed at Red Studios which was on the way to the Happy Days House…

We got washed up and changed and were ready to head out by 6:35..

We exited the hotel via Ovation and Walgreens, where we got a coupe of Mountain Dews to share on the walk ($4.48)…

A rare (for this trip) family selfie…

We saw the Pee Wee Herman doll in an abandoned shop on the way…

7:10 - We arrived at Trejos and were seated straight away…

We also shared the Cheesy Bean Dip appetiser..

It was Taco a Tuesday, so I had to have Tacos - I went for the 2 Taco Combo, choosing beef Barbacoa and Baja Fish. This came with Rice and Beans…

Rich had the Steak Asada Burrito…

Tom had the Carnitas (pork) Quesadilla…

Tom and Rich had Coke and I had a Sprite (Total $75.02)…

The food was all really good. Rich really enjoyed his burrito. My tacos were both nice, but the beef one had gone a bit cold by the time I ate it so I should’ve had that one first. It was still really good though.

Throughout the trip, Tom had been talking about getting his first tattoo (of a small palm tree) whilst we were here. We discussed how he was running out of time and that it probably wasn’t the best idea to get one the day before flying, so tonight was his last chance. He’d been doing some research and Old Tradition had the best reviews on Hollywood Boulevard, so we agreed to give the Happy Days house / Roger Rabbit studios a miss and head there instead…

8:20 - We arrived at Old Tradition and Tom and I went in (Rich said he’d wait outside). It was quiet, but looked clean, but when Tom asked for a price it was minimum $120 (even for a really small one). Tom had been looking into tattoos for a while and reckoned he could get what he wanted for about £40 back home, so wasn’t willing to pay that much (especially as it would probably be $150 by the time he added tax and a tip).

We mooched back along Hollywood Boulevard towards to hotel, popping into a couple of tat shops on the way to look at t-shirts and hoodies. One had some little Garbage Pail Kids and some cool Micro Masters of the Universe, but Rich wouldn’t let me buy them for him…

We chuckled at this, because when Tom passed his driving test, the DVLA used his old 12 year old passport photo, so that’s his current ID 😂

Fancy Taco Bell and more tat shops…

8:30 - Tom and I popped into Gharadellis / Disney Store to have a mooch…

They had a couple of Disney bits…

I bought a Ghiradelli Squares Christmas ornament, which was good value at $6.95, and also got a Mocha (Total $13.36)…

El Capitan Theatre ticket booth…

We had a mooch in the Hard Rock Cafe store…

This Spider-Man always had his mask off whenever we saw him…

We sat down for a few mins sit down in Ovation…

I’d remembered by now that we should be able to see the Hollywood Sign from Ovation, so we went up the steps to have a look. We could see Mount Lee and the Antenna that is behind the sign, but surprisingly the sight isn’t lit up at night, so we’d have to look again in daylight…

We had quick look at the conference area in the hotel on the way to the lifts and we’re in the room by 10pm…

Rich popped out for a smoke and came back with a couple of drinks, some waters for tomorrow and a twin pack of Red Velvet cookies from 7Eleven (no receipt but Rich said the cookies were around $1.39)…

Rich and Tom had one each as I was fine with my Mocha.

Tom popped out for his usual Face Time with Lola.

I didn’t make a note of what time we settled down but I don’t think it would’ve been too late.

Total steps today - 24,144 👣

Day 13 (Weds 30/08) - Universal Studios & A Chilled Evening at Ovation Hollywood

[Cinderella]

Great day exploring!