Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Ventura – Malibu – Anaheim

Since sharing a camp site with Robinson Crusoe we have moved on; and been busy!

As you know from the last blog we were in Ventura for a long weekend. Ventura is a relatively nice town, but the beach left us cold – in more ways than one. And…believe it or not we met up once more with our Monterey neighbors!

From Ventura we traveled down Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu – the coast line is absolutely breathtaking. As we were driving along approaching Malibu Tom noticed RV’s in the distance on the side of a hill and wondered if it was Malibu RV Resort where we had reservations.
It was; and what a joy it turned out to be!

We pulled into the campsite and were directed to site V1, which challenged Tom’s parking abilities – it demanded that he parallel park, no less! What a view we had, we were literally looking down a bluff (about 250 feet) at the beach and the Pacific; where every morning a pod of Dolphins entertained us. Certainly, the most spectacular camp site we’ve been to since we set out on our travels.

The Northern Trust Open was being held at the nearby Riviera Country Club and we had 5 Pro Golfers as neighbors, including Jimmy Walker who finished in 4th place.

Tuesday we settled in, chatted with two new friends Mary who hails from Wisconsin and who is Giada De Laurentiis (of TV Cooking Channel fame) mother-in-law and Roger from DC; Roger had a 1960’ish BMW Motorcycle and a German Army WW11 sidecar complete with machine-gun mounting.  We also hiked the short distance to Solstice Canyon, and then the Canyon itself on Tuesday; which has an interesting history.

Wednesday we went to visit the La Brea Tar Pits www.tarpits.org and the adjacent George C. Page Museum. Why, oh why are these not more widely publicized? Only that we were meeting my friend Lisa for lunch at the nearby Farmers Market Tom would still be in the Museum. This should be on everyone’s “to do” list when in the LA area. Roger joined us for dinner that evening and entertained us afterwards with his bass banjo.

Thursday we spent at the Getty Villa www.getty.edu/villa in Malibu and Friday at the Getty Museum www.getty.edu/museum in LA. Again…both should be on everyone’s “to do” list, not alone for the exhibits, but more importantly for the splendor of their location and architecture.

Saturday we had a wonderful visit from Jennifer and Karl’s friends the Brookbanks; Richard & Dina, 10 year-old twins Ben & Oliver and 5 year-old Henry. After some time exploring the campsite and its environs we headed north to Bob Morris’ Paradise Cove Beach Café for lunch – you just have to go there for brunch/lunch when visiting Malibu; and…for you chocolate lovers the Chocolate Cake is ginormous and delicious – we ordered a slice – all 7 of us had some and we still took some home! We played soccer and rugby on the beach to Henry’s great delight.
Uncle Karl eat your heart out!

In our next blog I’ll start with Sunday at Lisa’s. 

1 comment:

  1. Glad you got to Paradise Cove - the food is fab and right on the beach! Keep calling us - it's great to talk to you. Take care. Love Sally xx

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