Travels

10/28/01 - Even though our flight from Papeete departed at 1:45 in the morning, I included it in the previous day's entry. The flight itself I will consider a night, and so this entry begins with our arrival back at LAX. It was a 7 hour, 45 minute flight, and Los Angeles is 3 hours ahead of Tahiti (at least during this time of year, when the U.S. Daylight Saving Time is in effect), so we arrived at 12:30pm L.A. time. It was a long and grueling flight but not quite as tough as going in the other direction. I guess we had the jet stream working in our favor. So we went and fetched our luggage, which luckily made it back with us, and went off to catch the rental car shuttle. We got another convertible for dirt cheap, although the counter girl at Enterprise somehow thought we had ordered an economy, and this caused a bit of a ruckus, but soon we were on our way.

We headed straight to the hotel, and by the time we got there, it was around 2:30 in the afternoon. This last night of the trip was spent at the Best Western Ocean View Hotel on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. It was a few notches down from the ultra-luxury resorts we had been staying in, but this was still a nice spot. The location was excellent. Ocean Avenue, as the name implies, is right near the ocean. Not right ON the ocean, because there is still another road, the Pacific Coast Highway, which IS actually on the water. Instead, Ocean Avenue sits at the top of a bluff, and looking across the street from the hotel, all you can see is ocean, because the cliff prevents a view of the PCH. But the room had a nice little balcony facing west towards the sea, and this was a nice thing to have. We were 2 blocks from the famous Santa Monica pier, where there are restaurants, cafes, shops, and a small amusement park/carnival (called Pacific Park) with a giant ferris wheel that you can see from miles away. Going back in the other direction, away from the sea, is the also famous 3rd Street Promenade, a long strip of stores and eateries and bars, closed to vehicle traffic, where all the California bohemians hang out, and local bands set up in the street to play. These 2 attractions were the reason for picking this particular spot. That, and the advice of a co-worker who comes from LA (thanks Jonah!), who recommended Santa Monica and the pier as some of the things to check out while we were on the left coast.

With no plans, and not enough time left in the day for anything much, we ended up passing out for the rest of the afternoon. Lots of travel will do that to you. We woke up and watched a little bit of good old American TV. I think there was a good Woody Allen movie playing -- Small Time Crooks, with Jon Lovitz and Tracey Ullman. After a shower and a change, we went downstairs and out into the Streets of Santa Monica. Our first stop was the pier. A 2 block walk and across the main drag, we found the entrance. From there, we slowly walked to the end of the pier where the amusement park is. Entrance is free, and the rides are pay-as-you-go. We took a ride on the ferris wheel and the dinky roller-coaster, and a few other barf rides. And where to next? Dinner, of course. We went to a pretty decent but trendy Mexican Restaurant called Rebecca's right across the street from the pier and maybe a few blocks down. Food was very good, but for some reason the waiter had a very strange attitude. He seemed to be hell bent on getting us drunk, with a kind of "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" tone. I don't know, maybe it was just me.

We finished dinner and then headed out toward the Third Street Promenade. This was kind of like an outdoor mall -- not because it was a strip of shops, but because the shops themselves, not all but many, were chain stores that you can find anywhere, like Gap, Old Navy, Limited, etc. So we avoided those, and just explored the unique places. And there were quite a few. One place we really liked was called Puzzle Zoo. They sold a lot of puzzles, yes, plain old-fashioned ones as well as some neat 3D ones, which is all fine, but they also had a great selection of other toys. Chief among these was a giant selection of collector's action figures. It seemed like they had every character that ever appeared in Star Wars and Star Trek, and characters from hundreds of other films and TV shows. I spent a long time playing with this great train set sort of thing. The concept was something like Legos meet Tycos meet Lionels. You build the trains, trucks, cars, whatever kind of vehicles out of playing blocks like Legos. then you add tracks and machinery, and plug it all into a hand-held remote controller. The store demo was a large track that carried a scooper/dumper truck between 3 or 4 locations, and a crane that could lift pieces out of the truck and dump them somewhere else. Each vehicle had its own remote control. This thing was great, and I am going to make sure my future kids get one!

Other features of the promenade were a few local bands playing right in the street (which was allowed because as I mentioned earlier, the street is closed to traffic), a few movie theaters, and plenty of clubs, bars, restaurants, and ice cream shops. And despite the fact that we were both bloated from a big Mexican dinner, we went into an old-time ice cream and soda shop and had a shake and a sundae. We were ready to bust by the time we left.

For further reading, here is a great photo essay on the area.
(that's also where I got the promenade photo above)