Venice Beach & Santa Monica

Our last day of the vacation we decided to do one last 'hurrah' and head south to Santa Monica (--it was just us and Lorisa because everyone went their separate ways at this point.) We thought while we were down there we might as well check out Venice Beach Oh dear! What a interesting almost scary place! It's know for it's 'muscle beach' where there is an actual weight lifting place right there on the beach. What we saw was a 300 lb man who had never lifted weights in his life, with the biggest beer belly hanging over his shorts trying to show off his stuff! Wow! Then we saw a guy twirling around wrapped in cellophane and high on something dancing down the street. We were asked if we wanted to tattoo our kids--they would even give us a deal 2 tattoos for $20! Are you kidding me? It was the weirdest place I have ever been. Not to mention the legalized marijuana everywhere! Yikes--get us out of here! We stopped in a few souvenir shops but decided we did not even want to purchase anything with the logo Venice Beach on it!! We quickly turned around and headed to Santa Monica!

Santa Monica Pier was a lot better. It had an amusement park and we told the kids we could go on one ride on the carousel! They were thrilled!

Mara chose the bunny!

Ty chose the triceratops and Caleb was pretty happy on the horse--especially since mommy was right behind him on the back!!

Hold on tight Mara Lew! We're going for a fun ride!

Next we walked all the way up to 3rd Street Promenade. It was fun seeing the break dancers performing in the streets and Ty liked seeing the bushes shaped as dinosaurs. It was mostly just shops and restaurants. We stopped and bought ice-cream cones which was a perfect ending to any day!

Oh boy it's cold!

Ty loves chocolate covered ice-cream cones! But we learned this trip that Caleb doesn't like ice-cream at all! Maybe it's too cold for him?!