Santa Monica

On Tuesday, older brother and I took a little drive up the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) to Malibu.  The scenery is gorgeous and the road is right in between the ocean and the cliffs.  It was really neat to see all the multi-million dollar homes precariously perched on the hillside.  "Hey Alexis, don't those things fall off some times?"  "Yup!"  Luckily none fell on top of us while we were driving.

Next stop was the Santa Monica pier.  It's a total tourist trap, but it was fabulous people watching and I got to play Skee-Ball.  We saw a street performer bending spoons with his mind.  Ooooh, Aaaaah.  Then we took a nice long walk along the ocean.  Amazingly, even in January, there were plenty of people lounging on the beach in bikinis.  There weren't many people braving the water though and after dunking my feet in, I could tell why.  I think the Pacific Ocean never gets as a warm as the Atlantic, correct me if I'm wrong.

After a nice relaxing stroll on the beach we headed back to the Third Street Promenade for more people watching a little window shopping.  The Promenade is the fancy schmancy pedestrian shopping district of Santa Monica.  We also stopped into REI (Alexis's current workplace) to see if I could score a new raincoat with his employee discount.  For some strange reason I have a feeling I'll be needing a good one soon ;)  We found a nice little cafe for some sandwiches, obviously I order the roasted veggie because it came with goat cheese!

For dinner Dad, Alexis, and I all hit up the sushi shack, yum!  I can't remember if it was Tuesday, but one of the days Dad and I watched a really neat documentary called 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' about graffiti artists.  I have also discovered, while staying with the boys, a show called Oddities.  It's a reality show about this ridiculously creepy antique store that specializes in selling straight-jackets, mummified cats, coffins, etc.  It's like a car crash, you want to look away but you just can't.