Santa Monica Pier CA - July 10

Well this morning looked a little grey to us and where we come from that generally means rain. But we were in California and what appears to be overcast is really just smog. Welcome to California, now shop! At least that i what we felt when we drove into CA yesterday. The only tourist information we could find was in a mall, giving us the feeling that while they were welcoming us to their state, they were also making it feel like we were being angled towards the stores. The ladies at the mall/info station were very helpful with directions for the freeways around LA. I don't know who has driven thee before but for me the thought of approaching the LA freeway/highway system was a little daunting. But one of the ladies was nice enough to print out the diurection that would not take me down the 91 which is apparently one of the busier freeways in the afternoon. Thank you! The drive from Las Vegas to La was not as bad as I thought it was going to be and we made it to our hotel in great time. Best thing about arrival was the cool breeze and the pool in the sun. We spent a relaxing evening sunning, swimming, and getting excited to see E & A at Santa Monica tomorrow.

Sanata Monica Pier is one of the older LA attractions, very touristy but still fun. We were a little disappointed with the smog/cloud cover? and the cool wind this morning as we had hopped to maybe swim at the beach but we will take what we can get. The surfers were out in the water when we arrived, with their wetsuits the cold didin't bother them at all. We were content to walk along the shoreline and do a little wading on our way to the pier. There are vendors, trapeeze artists, food stalls, and a midway that opens a little later in the day. The crowds don't start to get bad until closer to lunch when the tour groups come in. We wandered down to the end of the pier to check out the fishermen and the view of the Pacific Ocean. Beautiful! It is dark blue and green, looked deceptiivly calm until you glanced back at the surfing area and saw the waves. We decided to take a ride on the ferris wheel to have a bird's eye view of the park and ocean. Finally we got a buzz from A & E telling us that they were close. We headed back to the parking area to meet up with them. Excitement! Hugs all around :) It has been years since I have seen them and we all missed them. We visited the pier a bit longer together and decided to stop for lunch at "Bubba Gump's". Yum, delicious seafood and a fun atmosphere, complete with a 'Forest Gump' pop quiz at the end.

We had plans to go vist the Getty museum on the hill that evening but were unpleasently surprised by the HUGE amount of traffic and the lousy direction flow of said traffic. It seemed that everyone decided to go to the Getty that night and the guards were ubprepeared for the sheer numbers. We were following A & E, who were using their gsp to find the best way to the museum, unfortunately it didn't know about the backup of traffic. After exiting the expressway we followed the flow of traffic towards the mmuseum, and after waiting in the line forever we get to the turn off to go into the parking lot. But wait... they had it blocked off and we had to drive almost to the next expressway on ramp to find the end of the line to enter thej museum parking lot. By this point we were so disgusted with the traffic and the wait, we figured that we probably wouldn't even be able to find a parking spot if and when we got in. So... we decided to scrap the whole idea and head back to the hotel and stop into Disneyland to pick up our passes for the next day and do a little shopping. Just seeing the lights of the park make you feel a little giddy :) Tomorrow is DISNEY Day :)