July 10th, 2007

Today we began our honeymoon! And also, our about 36 hour trip to Australia. We started in Philly this morning, raced through the Chicago airport to make the connection in less than 10 minutes, and then got to LA where we have 9 hours. Rather than sitting around the airport for 9 hours, we decided to investigate what we could do via a cab ride in LA. I had been told to go to Venice Beach, but since we didn’t actually know where that was in relation to the airport, we first stopped in a bookstore at the airport and investigated. As it turns out, Venice Beach is relatively close to the airport. Probably about a 15-20 minute cab ride. We also bought a couple of Australia guidebooks as we have managed to lose the ones we have, and will need them for the next few weeks.
We got out of the cab pretty much right on the beach. The beach is very wide and somewhat windy. The sands are beautiful, but since we were in travel clothes we opted not to fill our shoes with said sand and instead looked at it and the Pacific Ocean beyond. We then walked along the stores that line Venice Beach. I think the whole area is Venice Beach. There was everything from cheap sunglasses (which Rob was thankful for) to people with signs saying that they need marijuana to t-shirt shops and ice-cream shops. There was a wild array of people wandering the street or seated on the grass watching. We decided to grab a cup of coffee and do some people watching. Shortly thereafter, a giant fire truck parked right in front of us. It was a very pretty truck – complete with wooden ladders on its sides. The fire truck was soon followed by an ambulance, into which they put someone who appeared to have wounded his hand, and both rolled slowly off down the pedestrian street. Somewhat surreal.
We asked for dining advice in the coffee shop and were told to head down to Washington Street and we would find a few nice restaurants. This was definitely true! And on the way there, we wandered along that same pedestrian walk through waves of different cultural experiences. The hippies, the hip-hop, and the hip. Towards Washington Street there were some really impressive beachside buildings with stone artwork and water fountains on their front. We found a lovely restaurant and had dinner sitting outside and watching the world go by. From there, we were also able to easily catch a taxi back to LAX. Still with 3 ½ hours to go before we leave, we found a couple of seats near an outlet (which turns out to not work very well), and are playing cards. Soon – crossing the Pacific!