USA road trip, Post 8: California coast

On Tuesday, July 6th, we left Adrian and Petrea's home in San Francisco and set off on the 8 hour drive south to Los Angeles. We travelled via Highway 1, which hugs the coastline most of the way.

Before leaving San Fran, though, we made a point of driving down Vermont St - San Francisco's real crookedest street (refer to previous blog entry). No line-up this time! Here are some photos and a video of that experience ("Trucks not advised" the sign says... yeah, I agree!!):

The California coast between San Fran and Monterey...





Lunch at Schooner's Bistro in Monterey - where we got a $30 parking ticket for not putting quite enough money in the meter...



A picturesque bridge somewhere between Monterey and Los Angeles...







During the drive, we phoned the contact number we'd been given for a Wednesday night meeting in the area near our LA hotel... but it turned out they were having a small gospel meeting on Tuesday night instead! At first we didn't think we could make it in time, but thanks to the time of day meaning we were heading into LA while the peak hour traffic was heading out, which cut some time off our GPS's original ETA - and after a quick change of clothes in a gas station - we managed to arrive with just a few minutes to spare! It was a lovely unexpected end to our drive.

Afterwards, we found a nearby address we'd been given, where we were to drop off a bag of convention clothes that Adrian and Petrea had been storing for Roger the cycling Kiwi (whom we met on Sunday in San Fran). It was quite a hilarious errand given that we didn't know the bag's recipient, she didn't know we were coming, we had only met the bag's owner once, and he probably didn't even know we were involved (A&P just needed a way to get it from SF to LA)!!

Then we checked into our hotel in the Brentwood/ Westwood area of Los Angeles - just south of Beverley Hills and east of Santa Monica. After settling in, we walked to a nearby 24-hour restaurant for a late night dinner.





This hotel would be our home for the next two nights, and I will dedicate the next blog entry to my experience there...