mybigadventures.com

Dani set her alarm last night in an effort to get us moving a little earlier. We snoozed in for quite a while before eventually getting up at about 9 AM. We put some clothes on and headed down to Starbucks with the journal and some postcards to write, whilst we had breakfast. I had an orange juice and a chocolatine, whilst Dani had a blueberry scone and vanilla latte. After breakfast, we headed up to get dressed and showered, ready for a day out. I spoke to Mum for a bit on Skype whilst we were getting ready; she was just having tea. We picked up the car from the car park and headed out towards Beverly Hills.

The plan was to drive up Rodeo Drive, home to all the expensive shops. Once there, we decided we would park up and have a walk around for a bit. We tried an underground car park; there were no spaces, but then we happened upon a multi-storey car park that was free for the first two hours - bonus! It was opposite the Warner Brothers media gallery. It was on the road running parallel to Rodeo Drive. We spent about an hour and a half wandering up and down. The weather was lovely and warm and there were lots of expensive looking cars buzzing around with open tops, blacked out windows, etc. We saw a Bugatti Veyron (a very expensive car) parked outside a shop on Rodeo Drive. It was getting a lot of attention and lots of people were taking photos, including me. On the way back to the car, we stopped at ‘The Ice Cream Lab’. The ice creams were five dollars for small tubs, but they made the ice cream fresh, on the spot, using dry ice, I think, to freeze it. I had Mulholland Mint, with chocolate chips, and Dani had Blue Velvet,  which had little tiny cupcakes with cream frosting mushed into it. We sat outside to eat and watched the world go by. After, we headed back to the car to drive to our final destination for the day - Santa Monica.

We joined the Santa Monica Boulevard almost immediately, as it was just around the corner and then ignored the SatNav, as it kept trying to get to turn us around, despite Santa Monica Boulevard being a straight road into Santa Monica - funnily enough. Tried a car park that turned out to be full, so parked in a space on the road, before realising that said car park suddenly had spaces again. We managed to get a space right near the entrance as someone was just leaving. It was three hours maximum parking, but the first 90 minutes were free! Amazing!

We wandered down towards the beach, which wasn’t far, as the car park was only on 4th Street. We found a spot near the lifeguard station and ate leftover pizza from yesterday, by way of lunch. We spent a while looking out to sea at the yachts and swimmers. There were also a couple of planes that kept looping around, advertising Bud Light. Dani went for a paddle and some pelicans flew over head in a flying V. We then started walking along the front, to the pier, which turned out to be a little disappointing, with lots of tacky theme-park-type attractions. We followed the pier back into town, looking for postcards, but in the end didn’t bother.

There were a number of street performers along the front, including a guy with lots of parrots who was giving them to people to hold; one girl was cradling a parrot like a baby! We walked back along 3rd Street Promenade - the pedestrianised shopping area. There were a number of street performers and also a number of monuments to recognise contributors to the Santa Monica Education Program (they were cast in bronze; one was a pile of books, another was a desk - they looked very good). We had a quick look in a gadget shop before heading back to the car. The parking cost $1 as we had only been 2 1/2 hours. Bargain!

The drive back was pretty straightforward and we were back in the hotel by 7 PM. The car park was very full as there was a wedding in the hotel and a concert nearby. We parked at the back of a double space where we would be blocked in. The valet attendant said there would be someone to help us in the morning.

We dropped our stuff and went to Little Tokyo for tea. There was karaoke in the main square which was quite funny, and some popular songs were getting murdered by a range of keen amateurs. A lot of the restaurants were quite busy, and we eventually settled for one in the back corner, where we took a number (32) and waited to be seated. I was a little anxious, so Dani did the ordering. I had chicken teriyaki with vegetable tempura and Dani had the beef version, but with a mix of vegetable and shrimp tempura. We had soup to start and green tea ice-cream to finish. We did a grand job using chopsticks and I only dropped the tempura into the dipping sauce by accident a couple of times. It cost about $37 and was very nice, apart from the ice-cream, which we both left the majority of.

We headed back to the room and Dani did some packing, whilst I watched TV. A little later we tried to visit the Japanese roof garden again, but it was closed due to the wedding. Instead, we went to the little minimart around the corner again, where I got an ice-cream and Dani had an almond Snickers bar. We had a beer, watched telly and went to bed.

We were up a little later after the long day yesterday, but made use of the hotel Starbucks to grab some breakfast. Once we were ready, we set off for the information centre on Boston Common. We were initially after a map, but once there we decided to buy the Freedom Trail map for $2. The Freedom Trail takes you around all of the historic landmarks in Boston, but last time we were here in 2013, we bought trolley bus tickets, so had never actually followed it properly. The trail is clearly marked by a red brick path and can be followed for free, but the map we bought gave us some additional information about each of the stops. There were 16 stops in total, taking you across the city by foot, starting at Boston Common and ulimataely finishing at the Bunker Hill Monument.

Along the trail, we stopped off in churches and burial grounds tracing the steps of legendary American patriots including Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere. There is plenty to see and covering the whole trail took us the whole day. The real highlight was visiting USS Constitution or old iron sides as it was knicknamed due to the way cannon balls bounced off the sides. Last time we were here in 2013, we managed to see the ship sailing out into the harbour and firing cannons, we since found out this happens only 6 or 7 times a year, so this time when we visited it was docked for visitors. You go through some security and have to show photo ID before you're able to board the ship as the site is an active military base but then we were on board. We spend some time exploring the ship both above and below deck, taking a few pictures as we went before moving on to our final stop at Bunker Hill. Just before we left, we made full use of the water vapour spray they had on the way into and out of the base - it was another scorcher today and so the water spray was a welcome treat.

By the time we reached the last stop at Bunker Hill, we were feeling pretty tired so we decided to get a drink and look for somewhere to eat on the way back to the hotel. We stopped at Starbucks and making use of their WiFi, we found a place to eat close by. It was a pub and so we both got ID'd on the way in - first time in a while! I had a steak sandwich whilst Dani had a seafood sandwich, it was very nice, but feeling tired we headed back to the hotel soon after. We spent the evening catching up on some journal and photos, booking tour tickets for Fenway park tomorrow, before calling it a night. 

This is just a quick one to wish Dani a very Happy Birthday. Hope you had a great day at the zoo and enjoyed the cake!