On of the first things hubby and I did in Los Angeles? See the Pacific Ocean - my first time, his real first time even though he may have seen glimpses when he was a truck driver. We walked from Venice Beach to the Santa Monica pier on Sunday. We saw a pod of wild dolphins - I never saw wild dolphins before, either, not even in Key West.
Here I am having a beer at the Sidewalk Cafe on the boardwalk in Venice Beach. I also had a cheeseburger and fries. The menu has a "Bookshelf" section, which includes sandwiches named for the Iliad and the Odyssey, the thesaurus, Daniel Pinkwater, Mario Puzo, Henry Miller, and Ernest Hemingway. Why no female authors, I wonder?
The street art outside the cafe was also bookish: this is Edgar Allan Poe with Alice Cooper-esque eye makeup. Why Poe? I wonder. I would think John Steinbeck would be more California's style.
Next to the Sidewalk Cafe was Small World Books. I bought a blank journal there, and was sorely tempted to buy the latest Lemony Snicket volume, Who Could That Be at This Hour? I also wanted to buy - but didn't - The Dial Press trade paperback of From Here to Eternity:
...although I cannot for the life of me figure out why The Dial Press has not released a new edition of Whistle. My book obsessiveness demands they complete the trilogy. My favorite part of Small World Books? Petting Conan the Librarian, the bookstore cat.
You can't see it because he's sleeping, but he has a black spot on the nose. He's almost, but not quite, a Cat That Looks Like Hitler.
Venice, California, is named Venice because of its human-created canals. They're quite beautiful.
It's nice to just wander around in the canal neighborhood and sight-see, and then come out and have a beer at the Baja Cantina or another place. Next time I come to Venice Beach, I am definitely renting a wet suit and a surfboard. (This time, we rented a tandem bike. That was fun, too.) I still contend that if I can stand up on a paddleboard, I could totally learn to stand up on a traditional longboard.
