Venice Beach to Malibu

Jill's Journal: What can be said about Venice Beach when it’s been unofficially christened as the “weirdness capital of California, if not North America”? That’s saying something! Surely there is no better place in America to people watch…and be amazed.

Venice is never dull, that’s for sure. This is where Jim Morrison founded The Doors and modern skateboarding got its start. At any given moment on the boardwalk which is officially named Ocean Front Walk, there might be people breathing fire. Or snake charming. Or break dancing. There’s always artists and musicians. Rob and I have been here in the summer before and it was wall-to-wall people. For some reason the thing I remember most is scores of women on rollerblades wearing bathing suits that qualified as not much more than dental floss.

It is much quieter and calmer on a weekday morning in the winter, but I think the girls enjoyed the few street performers and numerous street vendors nonetheless. This electric guitar-playing guy was already a legend 20 years ago! It’s amazing he’s still here.

The guy to the right had a Kentucky shirt on! He must have been okay. :)

This cracked me up…shops for piercings, tattoos, medical marijuana, and fortune tellers are everywhere here. And now one can even get “Botox on the Beach.”

Muscle Beach is here. Actually, there’s two Muscle Beaches. If you walk about two miles up Ocean Front Walk, you’ll hit the wonderful beach town of Santa Monica. The original Muscle Beach is there, although it now focuses more on gymnastics than bodybuilding. The Venice version with the famed “Weight Pen” was made particularly notorious by bodybuilders-turned-actors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno.

It was so interesting to watch these bodybuilders do their thing.

This guy made me laugh. He saw I had a camera and he posed for me! When I laughed and waved thanks, he gave me a big thumbs-up and a huge smile.

The girls loved watching skateboarders and their fancy moves at the skate park. Madelyn quickly noticed there were no girl skaters, at least on this day. She’d like to change that.

No bathing suits for this beach visit, but the girls found the beautiful, wide beach irresistible just the same.

To see beautiful beachfront homes, there aren’t too many better drives than the one up the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), from Santa Monica (where Route 66 terminates) through the ritzy Pacific Palisades and into Malibu. This photo was snapped after turning around in Malibu and coming back south. Malibu’s 27 miles of coastline are simply exquisite. The homes make an almost continual wall for miles, blocking PCH from views of the ocean in many places. But oh, what homes they are – some of the priciest ocean-front houses in the world. One section in particular is called “Billionaires Beach,” as the richest of the rich have beach mansions here (these aren’t your typical little beach cottages). It's estimated there are more celebrity homes in Malibu than even in Beverly Hills or the Hollywood Hills or in any other place in the world. “Star maps” are available and literally almost every other home is a celebrity’s. There are hundreds.

Many of the scores of celebrities who have (second or is it third or fourth?) homes in Malibu live in the exclusive Malibu Colony. The mansions in here are owned by Sting, Tom Hanks, John McEnroe, and many other very recognizable names. The Malibu police department fiercely guards the privacy of its residents and even though the public can walk on the beach at low tide, just below the high tide mark, one step off the wet sand too close to one of the houses results in an arrest if sighted. We decided it was best not to risk it with small children. :)