California Christmas: Local Culture

We were lucky enough to have a great friend in Huntington Beach allow us to use her home as a bed and breakfast (Starbucks just around the corner!) so we were able to save a little money.  We still paid to stay but it was much cheaper and nicer than a hotel.  We planned to start our adventure with a Megs must-do at the J.Paul Getty museum and then a Me must-do at Venice Beach.  Here is a summary of what we did and some fun pictures to go along with it.

We arrived the night before and were ready to go early the next morning.  A quick stop at Starbucks for my usual breakfast (venti, skinny hot chocolate, no whip, extra hot) and we were off.  We planned for about 2 hours to get from Huntington Beach to the Getty without traffic.  The traffic gods were on our side and we got there in great time.

The J. Paul Getty Museum is amazing and perfectly located above L.A. so you can get great views.  Admission is free and there are a lot of tours to join.  You do have to pay for parking ($15), but its worth it.  Megs is an art person and was excited to see the Monets and Manets and I was excited to let her teach me all about them.  I was interested in seeing the World War I images.  We were both excited to see the views and take some amazing pictures, provided the sun was actually shining in sunny Southern Cal.

 

 

 

Thankfully we got some brilliant pictures at the Getty and proved once again that we are really just supermodels waiting to be discovered.  We grabbed a quick lunch at the Getty and headed to the our next stop.  Time to absorbed some of the local culture at Venice Beach.

Since we are in sunny Southern Cal we should probably hit the beach and Venice Beach is one that I’ve always wanted to visit and it’s only about a half hour from the Getty.  Parking cost us around $10 and there are plenty of public lots.  Venice has always been known as a hangout for the creative and the artistic and in the 1950s and 60s, it became a center for the Beat generation.

We decided it would be a lot of fun to bike the bike path; it’s only like 5 miles (about an hour). If we go north on the path we’ll head into Santa Monica and then it’s another few miles (about an hour) into Pacific Palisades. Go south, and you can ride all the way from Marina Del Rey to the Palos Verdes peninsula Bike and Skate rental shops are available up and down the boardwalk.  We decided that north to Santa Monica was the route for us so we stopped at the first bike rental shop we found.  It was a perfect evening and our bike ride to the Santa Monica Pier, the oldest pier on the West Coast, was great.  After not riding a bike in many years, I'm happy to say that riding again was as easy as riding a bike -- you never forget.  Happy Christmas Eve to us!

 

 

 

HISTORY TEACHER info break:  Venice of America was founded by tobacco millionaire Abbot Kinney in 1905 as a beach resort town. When Venice of America opened on July 4, 1905, Kinney had dug several miles of canals to drain the marshes for his residential area and bring a taste of Venice to America. He also built a 1,200-foot long pleasure pier but the pier burned a decade later.  The canals became a neighborhood that people both lived in and took gondola rides down.    

     Venice Beach is the beach, the promenade that runs parallel to the beach (“Ocean Front Walk” or just “the boardwalk”), Muscle Beach, the handball courts, the paddle tennis courts, Skate Dancing plaza, the numerous beach volleyball courts, the bike trail and the businesses and residences along

Ocean Front Walk.  The Venice Beach Boardwalk is one and a half miles along the manicured sands of the Pacific Ocean. On the west side of the “walk” are street vendors and performers. On the Eastside are the store fronts of the boardwalk with every sort of t-shirt under the sun.
      The Venice Canals are located right off 25th street in Venice Beach and they are easy to walk right by. It is essentially a neighborhood of houses that line five canals about a quarter mile long each.  To enter the Canal area from the sand, you can take the following streets -- Go East on S Venice Blvd, then south on Dell Ave -- Go East on 25th Ave directly into the canal area -- Go East on 27th Ave directly into the canal area --Go East on W Washington Blvd, then north on Sanborn Ave.  It's really easy to find.

 

  

Tomorrow is Christmas and we always try to spend Christmas Eve in a "fancy" place.  This year, we decided to spring for a hotel in Anaheim so we'd be just that much closer to Disneyland, our Christmas Day adventure.  We stayed at the Hilton Anaheim, within walking distance of the Parks.  As it was Christmas Eve we had a unique dinner at Tiffy's, exchanged gifts (Pandora bracelets from our Mom!) and enjoyed the big soft hotel beds.