Santa Monica

Today, I spent most of the day in Santa Monica.

The Expo Metro line has just been extended out there, and by "just", I mean, the new seven station extension from Culver City out to the coast opened less than a fortnight ago, on May 20th, which was fortunate!

It was a sunny day, warming up very quickly.

Except Santa Monica is right on the coast.

It takes nearly an hour to trundle out there to the coast, where it was a big foggy.  It was nice because it meant it wasn't as hot as it was in downtown, where the temperature is up at 28C/86F or thereabouts.

There is a wide sandy beach onto the Pacific Ocean - somewhere in the fog.

There is a fairly long pier, with shops and restaurants and a funfair on it, all the usual sorts of traditional things you find on a pier.

So I had lunch at one of the restaurants, and then looked around some of the shops, walking up and down, before getting on the metro back to the downtown area again.

Even though it's only just opened, the new section of the Expo line was incredibly busy.  It was packed with students, standing room only.


 

I made sure that I left plenty early enough to get back to Union Station to pick up the Dodgers Express bus.  I had seen some posters advertising that former president Bill Clinton was going to be near one of the Metro stations campaigning on behalf of his wife for the upcoming election, and didn't want to get stuck if they closed the line later.