Hooray For Hollywood!
Today was our last full day in Santa Monica and we sure did make the most of it! This morning we were up at the crack of dawn and loaded into our Starline Tour Bus to go on a whirlwind tour of the stars’ homes. Our tour guide, Bob, was an absolute fountain of information and we were experts on who lived where and who sold their house to whom and what the going price for Beverley Hills real estate is at the moment, (amongst other valuable information) by the time we got off the bus! We got up close and personal with some of the “stars” on the Walk of Fame, saw the Kodak theatre, got as close as we could to the Hollywood sign, drove up and down Rodeo Drive and did some star spotting! It was a lot of fun.
When we got back to the hotel, we just had time to grab our cossies and head for the beach. We hired some bikes, Ross & Toby on one tandem, Molly & Sam on the other, Sarah, Julie, Soph & Em on single bikes and Ben towing a trailer with Will and Maisy on board! It was around 30 degrees today and a stunning day! The heat here is definitely not as biting as it is at home. There’s an awesome bike track winding all the way up to Venice Beach from Santa Monica and we absolutely loved checking out the dancing rollerskaters, baton twirlers, basketballers, volleyballers, skaters in the skate bowl and the “posers” at Muscle Beach, flexing their muscles! It was an amazing atmosphere. There were some markets on with live music and all sorts of sights you’d see only in America! We also stopped for a dip in the ocean but the water was FREEZING! It was also strange not to have any flags to swim between. David Hasselhoff was on duty so he ensured we were kept safe!
Tonight we caught up with an old Somerville family friend, Susie Fraser, and a couple of her good friends, and went to a great little Italian restaurant on the 3rd St Promenade called Buca di Beppo. We had the Pope Room, which was a room jam-packed full of papal memorabilia, pictures, statues of the Vatican, artifacts and to top it all off, a giant-sized bust of the man himself, right in the middle of the lazy susan ! The food was beautiful! All the shops are open till late and we had a great walk around after dinner.The promenade has such a different feel at night, with fairy lights in all the trees and musicians and buskers everywhere.
