Road trip to LA

17 Mile Drive
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Driving down Highway 1 (Pacific Coast Highway) is a great way to see California. It's also a great way to turn a 500 mile trip into a 2 day affair - and worth every minute.

Highlights

• The 17 mile drive through Pebble Beach where the golf fairways look like greens and the people that own houses there have money trees growing in their back gardens (how else could they afford it) !!!
• Staying in Carmel which is described aptly in our travel book as Gingerbreadman country
• Having to pee into a Snapple bottle on a highway after getting stuck in Los Angeles traffic (and that was me not Shawn)

Quaint Carmel-by-the-Sea
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Lowlights

• Overfilling the Snapple bottle every so slightly !!! Oops
• Witnessing people 'shooting up' in LA while the cops were arresting others just meters away.

Details

Day 8 - We picked up our Malibu car at San Fran airport and headed south on Highway 1 in the direction of Los Angeles. The entire length of the highway runs along the coast and it's a very enjoyable drive, for those who don't suffer from car sickness. Our first stop was Monterey  where we ate some lunch, watched a few seals sunning themselves and then moved on. That's when we joined up with the '17 mile drive' through Pebble Beach and on the other side of that was Carmel where we spent the night. What a gorgeous little town. It's filled with art galleries and jewelery stores and it reeks of class.

Big Sur
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The next morning (Day 9) we took a stroll along Carmel beach (even their sand feels extra soft and luxurious) and drove on to Big Sur. Our stop for the day was Hearst Castle (holiday home of William Randolph Hearst, the publishing magnet). Very interesting.

We continued our drive through San Luis Obisbo and onto Pismo Beach where we spent the night in our first real Motel. It seems the nightlife in Pismo Beach is primarily Tenpin Bowling (nothing against bowling - I'm just trying to set the scene).

Hearst Castle
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On day 10 we started off with a stroll along Pismo beach and then it was back in the car. We stopped in Santa Barbara for about 2 hours and soaked up some of the 80's that it oozes. It's a great town and I wouldn't have minded spending the night there. Then we hit the outskirts of LA and as warned the traffic was pretty bad - what was worse than that though was the fullness of my bladder. Anyway I gave Shawn a good laugh (and really one should not laugh when trying this in your car) when I had to resort to pee pee'ing in a Snapple bottle so i didn't wet myself. Anyway enough said about that.

Santa Barbara Mission
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Los Angeles is absolutely massive but we were staying in a great location for the major attractions like Sunset Boulevard. We took a casual stroll along 'The Strip' that evening followed by burgers and milkshakes at Mel's diner.

On our only full day (day 11) in LA we chose to join a mini bus guided tour of the city organized by the hostel - well worth it considering the size of the city and the fact that our guide - Mikey Z ('zee') knew all the good toilet stops !!!! It lasted 6 hours and included driving by loads of stars homes, Rodeo Drive, Venice Beach, Hollywood Boulevard, Rock Walk, the Hollywood sign, Skidrow and South Central LA where we were literally the only white people for as far as the eye could see. Mikey Z was worth the $45 all on his own. He had endless stories of the girls he hooked up with over the years from his days on the road (he also let slip that these 'wild' days were when he used to serve coffee on the sets of movies and set up instruments at gigs !!! Entertaining none-the-less.