Venice Beach, LA

We arrived in L.A at 16.30 and headed to our hostel in Venice Beach, about an hour's bus ride from downtown. We headed out for a look round the local area and found a Chinese restaurant. The food was really good and massive portions. A really good find. On day two we hired some bikes and went for a ride along Venice and Muscle Beach. Muscle beach is where Arnie used to hang out when training for the Mr. Universe competitions. You still get the usual wannabees down there wearing their little posing pouches. Venice beach is full of weird and wonderful people selling everything from home-made jewellery to tarot card readings along the boardwalk. We made it all the way up to Santa Monica and back. We both tried our hand at swinging along the hanging hoops on the beach and failed miserably. Again the carpet carriers made it look easy! Again we had some weird encounters with the Americans staying in our hostel. We had a bloke with only one leg staying in our room who liked constantly playing solitaire on the PC and getting really drunk. As the bottle of whiskey took affect, he became really arrogant and rude. He then decided that he would sing along with his ipod with all the charm of a wailing cat. When that was complete, he wanted to move bed so he grabbed all the belongings of another traveller and threw them in the corner along with the bed sheets and claimed the bed as his own. The following morning he was thrown out of the hostel after the 5 other inmates complained. The following day we moved hostel to the central USA Hostel in Hollywood, right by the Walk of Fame.