We were up and pancaking and out of the Hostel Obispo by 10ish. I swung us by Blackhorse Coffee, which we'd found out the day before was pretty decent, and were back on Hwy 1 headed towards LA before too much longer. The PCH started out by swinging us through some heavy farmland, some of which was still in sight of the beach, which was kind of neat. It was a little less neat as we started climbing upwards again, and we came across places that were being worked by migrant farmers directly across from prestigious and lavish white people golf-courses. Awkward.
Unlike the rest of the PCH, this section was pretty tame in comparison, at least until we hit the coast again. It wasn't as wild and rocky as it was further north, but still very pretty. We stopped around noon in Santa Barbara, and wandered around for a bit before EK found a place called the Brophy Bros., and we knew that we had definitely found our place of lunching. With a name that like, I wasn't honestly expecting much, but Google Maps took us up into the harbor area, where we parked and found our restaurant waiting for us upstairs and overlooking the docks. We sat outside on the narrow deck and had a pretty fine view of the water and various boats coming and going, as well as one lone seal/sea lion (I couldn't really tell the difference from where we were) rolling about between the boats. I got garlic baked clams, and EK got a delicious grilled fish sandwich, and we split some clam chowder that was to die for. All in all, for a place that we picked based on the completely ridiculous/amazing name, pretty damn good.
We hopped back on Hwy 1/101 (they kept merging and diverging throughout the trip), and continued towards LA. Our route took us through Malibu, where we learned that we are still definitely not mature enough to refrain from giggling madly at people in wetsuits, and that damn there are a lot of nice houses in Malibu. Eventually we went through Santa Monica and into LA, which we made a little bit after 3. Our host wasn't going to be in until late, and we didn't have dinner plans until 7:30 with one of EK's high school friends, so we decided to head down to Seal Beach to kill some time.
Now, Seal Beach isn't very far out of LA, maybe 30 minutes or so, but apparently traffic starts early (or never stops...which is the answer I am leaning towards), so we were slammed in that, and as I worried about whether or not we were going to make it down and back in time for dinner, EK was emailing and texting. Eventually her high school friend Tamar advised that we just head back and chill in Santa Monica until it was time for dinner, so we could avoid a lot of the really bad parts of LA, and also make sure that we weren't caught in 4 hours worth of traffic.
We turned around, and I cursed my way through more traffic (thankfully a little less heavy), and finally arrived safely at the Santa Monica beach, where we hopped out, rolled up our pants and took off our socks and shoes and went down to the water long enough to let the surf come to us, and to say, "Yeah, that is about as cold as I thought" before sloughing back through the sand to sit and people watch.
Right about here I get the full scoop on our evening plans, which had changed slightly. Due to some internet/social faux pas, EK determined that we would be finding lodging elsewhere for the night, and that Tamar was going to be amazingly awesome, and put us up instead. People watching garnered us a street hockey game, more people on roller blades than I've seen since the mid nineties, and a few enterprising folks had combined roller blades (and one skateboard) along with reasonably sized hand held sails.
We left about a quarter to 7 to head down to C&O, which was a pretty good Italian joint in Venice Beach, and met with Tamar, who was a pretty awesome dude. Afterwards we headed to his and his girlfriend's apartment near Hollywood. We watched the first season of the IT Crowd and then crashed right the heck out.
Day 9:
View Larger Map
No comments:
Post a Comment