anniebrooks: Day 8 Santa Monica

We went to a diner called Swingers for our breakfast – an amazingly interesting and cool place. Our waitress said she loved London and had studied there back in 2001. One of her classmates (who incidentally had his own note-taker) was one of Osama Bin Laden’s sons who left the course on Sept 12^th... The cup-cakes at Swingers were made by a company called Bite Me, and their gf chocolate one was truly spectacular. Possibly better than the one at Babington House ... 2011 has been the year of the cupcake for me.

After our day of driving around the city yesterday, we stayed rather closer to the hotel today, with an outing to Venice. One of our guide books says this: ‘Venice is just plain cool. In fact, its coolness threatens to eat it alive and spit it back out as Santa Monica....Over the years the neighbourhood has attracted artists, visionaries and dreamers to its canals and crooked streets as well as its fair share of deadbeats, drunkards and trouble-makers.’ Indeed. We were offered a cigarette by a tramp which was jolly kind of him considering.

The houses on the canals were delightful.

After dinner we walked down to Santa Monica Pier with a view to getting our daily pic taken but on the way bumped into Nick, an Englishman who works at the Getty Centre who we met a few days ago. He and his Mum (see below) had been to buy Cornish Pasties. What a nice guy – he was happy to take the photo. Like T, his folks hail from Lancashire. You cannot blame him for living in Santa Monica though, a thought which has crossed our minds several times over these past few days.

The Pier at night was lovely and we were treated to a superb sunset..