Santa Monica Carpark

LA was fun. We arrived in South Venice mid afternoon, skipping the freeways. Instead we traveled along the coast road again, Highway 1. We were trying to meet up with my friend Anna who has an apartment she is restoring on Venice beach. Unfortunately I couldn't find her (I might have forgotten what apartment she was in, but there were only four. I found out later that she opened the upstairs door in response to my yelling but didn't see me so she closed it again). We had nowhere to stay so I started calling hostels in my outdated Lonely Planet guide. I found us a room at the Orbit Hostel, Hollywood and asked them to hold the room. Hollywood is only 14 miles (23k) from Venice but as we didn't have a map we decided to take Santa Monica blvd as it was the only way we knew. Lonely planet provides maps of Venice and Hollywood and Santa Monica Blvd appears on both of them so we thought we couldn't go wrong. The only problem was the Santa Monica Blvd turns into a parking lot during rush hour. So it took us two hours to crawl the 14 miles to get there. By the time we arrived they had given away the room (it was their only one left). Kat was ready to spontaneously combust but I wouldn't let her talk to the woman in reception. The worker suggested that there were rooms available at the Beverly Inn, only a few blocks away and she would call and reserve one. I thanked her and we drove to the new hotel. Kat let her mouth run unimpeded on the walk back to the car and the short drive; I wisely let her vent (hell, she wasn't pissed at me for a change). It turns out the new room was the same price, was larger, had air con, and wasn't in a hostel. So miss 'give away our room' inadvertently did us a favor. I didn't press the point on Kat though.

We went vintage clothes shopping on Melrose Blvd in the morning and drove down to meet Anna for lunch. The engagement was interesting...I'll leave it at that. We left Venice and drove around aimlessly until we found the 405 highway and drove down to the OC where we were meeting one of Kat's friends, CC for a place to crash.