Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Nicky and Ben's Travels
Venice Beach was everything we expected it to be. Except there was only one not particularly muscularly man at Muscle Beach. The first day was spent exploring the area walking along the boardwalk, looking at al the loons, skaters, surfers, and rollerbladers. There are loads of homeless people here also, but they are not as persistant as San Francisco. This is one of the things that I have noiticed about the USA with no welfare system the poor are truely poor, the night we spent with the American couple I learnt that many people simply do not have health insurance and it is beyond their reach and that even if they get work, the minimum wage is $5.15 about two pounds fifty, this made me realise how much difference the tips I have complained about (15-20 for all food/drinks) can make.
Anyway back to LA. Los Angeles is not really a city in the normal sense, really it is many cities each with its own individual charactor and style, they just happen to all be realy close together. The area we have been staying Santa Monica/Venice Beach is the southern California sun and surf city, miles of white beaches and cafes. Then there is Beverly Hills, this could not be more different, it is row after row of designer shops, luxury car dealerships and expensive resturants. We walked along Rodeo drive looking and feeling like tourists, however the feeling was almost sterile, everything was so clean, there were no people at street corners asking for change, the shops all had their own security guards one even had a Buckingham Palace style guard! Then there is Hollywood, street performers whos aim is to scare the life out of you and with Nicky they succeeded 7 foot tall with white pupilless contacts, he lept at her out of nowhere. We went to the chinese theatre and say the famous hollywood sign after that we felt we had done hollywood. One other place we visited was the La Brea tar pits, these are one of the most amazing collections of ice age fossils I have seen if not purely for the sheer number collected from one place. Woolly mammoths, sabre tooth tigers and wolves were all there plus camels and many other smaller creatures.
Overall America has been fantastic today we fly out to Tahiti and although looking forward to it I feel that I have barely scratched the surface and the longer I have been here the more I want to see. I am sure we will be back before long.
- comments