Santa Monica

When we originally looked at extended weather forecasts before we left Canada, this week was to be cool and rainy. Forget that. We're looking at a week of sunshine and warmth.
We started off the day driving Betty up to the Bel Air work site. On the way, we did our own little tour of the stars homes courtesy of the star map we bought yesterday. We found the entrance to Nancy Reagan's home, without being able to see the house and we saw the homes of Nicolas Cage and Helen Hunt that were both for sale. The Nicolas Cage home was formerly owned by both Tom Jones and Dean Martin.


We also discovered that Zsa Zsa Gabor's house, which is neighbouring Betty & Gary's new place, was formerly owned by Howard Hughes.
After leaving Betty with Gary, we drove towards Santa Monica and parked close to Montana and 15th street to begin our walk towards the Santa Monica Pier. Montana is a cool neighbourhood with lots of chic restaurants and shops, so it was an interesting walk.


When we hit Ocean Blvd. which as the name suggests, runs parallel to the Pacific, we were just a little under 2 kilometres from the pier. This was a beautiful walk along the top of the cliffs.
The pier itself was pretty lively. It's whole length is pretty much an amusement park, with the ferris wheel and roller coaster being the dominant features. This also marks either the end or the beginning of Route 66, depending on the direction you were heading.



After traversing its entire length, we settled at the restaurant, Lobsters which is right at the gate to the pier. We were given a table right at the window overlooking the pier which was quite a treat. As the name suggests, this place specialized in seafood so Dawn chose a dungeness crab salad with shrimp Louis and I had a wild arugula and dungeness crab salad. Excellent!

For our route back to the car, we strolled up Santa Monica Blvd. to 15th and then another couple kilometres along it. Needless to say, the step count is pretty good for today - 14000+.
The order of the day for dinner this evening was ribs and the ultimate rib joint in the area was Houstons in Century City. So off we went and YES, they were as advertised.

We still had time for a game of Bite Me and that's our Monday.