We decided to be tourists for the morning so we found a taxi that could take us and our bikes from Santa Monica to Hollywood (about 20km)!  We had a great time and the taxi driver was so nice and gave us so much information! 

She is a very sweet person and can you believe it, Italian descent!  One thing we learned today was that the colour of the street signs tell you what community you were in because in Los Angeles County, there is Los Angeles, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, etc., they are all separate! We had a great cab ride to very close to the Hollywood sign!  

There are mountain lions and rattle snakes in the hills around the sign! After a big hug sweet cab's woman we start to ride the bikes down the Walk of Fame!  We saw many of the sidewalk stars and it was very busy with people!  More people than traffic! 

We then headed off to ride our bikes down Santa Monica Boulevard!  That was very interesting and traffic wasn't bad at all.  There are bike lanes in some spots too!  We rode into Beverly Hills and went for a walk on Rodeo Drive.  We didn't buy anything (no bike shops, just designer clothes, eheh!!)! 

We rode all the way down Santa Monica Boulevard back to the beach and then set off on the beach bike path south!  The bike path runs right through the beach and there are mostly bikes on it but of course, people will walk on it, skate boarders, pedal cars, everything!  It was very busy, we think everyone in Los Angeles goes to the beach on the weekend plus the tourists! ;-)

The bike path go on forever, from one beach to another, sometimes it zig zags, other times it's straight.  You really can't go very fast because there are so many people just puttering along and the biking experience level is very broad, beginners to racers!  We even saw one person who looked like she was just learning to ride a bike.  We didn't try and pass her, she was a bit unstable and ended up crashing lightly into a sand bank. We went through Venice Beach, Muscle Beach (but we didn't see any people working out on the beach), Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach. 

We then got back onto the main roads through to the Los Angeles river.  There was a bike path along the river and it takes you into Long Beach.  The bike path is very straight and not as busy as the beach but there were a few spots with tent camps set up (a bit rough so probably best to go through during the day)! 

At Long Beach, we stopped to watch the pelicans dive into the water to fish.  They make a big splash when they hit the water and there is always a seagull that lands with them hoping to steal the fish the pelican catches! Long Beach has a beautiful harbour and there were some really nice vacation houses along the way.  Some friendly people invited us to stop for beer because they thought we were working too hard but we kept going! 

We ended up at Sunset Beach and found a really nice inn to stay at.  We're so close to San Diego now, less thn 100 miles so we could be there tomorrow!

Pacific Coast Bike Route: Day 29

July, 01 I  Santa Monica - Sunset Beach, California I United State I Km, 94.10

Vista from the holliwood sign and...

Sunset Suites... Home 2 tonight...