Saturday 21st April

Another day, another place. This time we were going to South Pasadena. We knew this would be the trickiest day for navigating and driving and we were right. South Pasadena is inland from LA and we had to drive right through the city. We drove from Santa Barbara to Malibu with no problems and then it started getting busier but we arrived in Santa Monica as planned. I wanted to see Venice Beach but although it was only just down the road, we managed to find ourselves on a freeway heading east by mistake. We got back but our detour cost us an hour.

Venice Beach is an amazing place, a bit like Camden Market-on-sea, a bit of a 60s/70s throwback. Lots of leftover hippies who looked completely out of it. And so many things to buy that you never knew you wanted, from henna tattoos to appallingly bad paintings to T shirts at 3 for $10. There was every conceivable type of music too - of varying quality. And of course, there's Muscle Beach where you can tone up in front of everyone, go roller-blading, cycling, play basketball or volleyball. You can eat too, far cheaper than elsewhere we'd come across. We'd hoped to visit Manhattan Beach too but didn't have a good enough map and managed to miss it.

So we cut our losses and made for Pasadena before it got too busy. We found our B&B, The Artists Inn, a lovely building in an area of wide tree-lined streets and pretty houses. Ours had a rose garden and each room is dedicated to a different artist or painting style. Ours was The Impressionist room and was lovely. There was a big lounge and we arrived in time for tea and cookies. In terms of space and decor, this was the nicest place we'd stayed in so far - it was the first time we could store our cases out of sight! That evening we bagged the last table at Braganti, Italian of course. Again, an excellent meal.

Sunday 22nd April

We had an excellent breakfast although never quite got used to the fact that you have bacon with sweet pancakes in America. After chatting with our hosts and other guests, we decided to visit the Huntington Gardens and Galleries, stopping first in the old area of Pasadena for a quick bit of shopping. The gardens are vast and very impressive. What a fabulous place, with so many different gardens to delight. My favourite was the cactus garden, thanks heavens for digital cameras or I would certainly have run out of film. Many of the cacti were in bloom and were stunning. Others included Australian, Japanese, rose garden and an English country garden. We visited the library and saw early Folios from Shakespeare, Gutenberg, St James Bibles and works by Chaucer. There was an excellent Art gallery which included a special exhibition of works by Constable. We also visited the Botanical centre with its rainforest, cloud forest and bog areas. A fantastic day out. In the evening we ate out at Mike and Anne's and had yet another delicious meal and then back for a lovely deep bath, something the other B&Bs lacked.

We had another lovely breakfast and our host, Dennis gave us a good route avoiding the LA section of Highway 1 en route to San Diego. We'd driven the best bit so that was fine by us. Breakfast was made even better by the presence of another guest, California's Poet Laureate, Al Young, what a beautiful speaking voice. Must be great to hear him reading. Making good time, we decided to stop at sea World, just north of our accommodation. We were just in time for the killer whale (Shamu) show but it's all a bit shmaltzy although the whales are beautiful creatures. Shame they have to be seen like this. We had time for most of the attractions: polar bears, sealion and otter show, penguins, sea otters etc. We avoided anything that involved getting soaked - i.e. most of the rides!

We then drove on to our accommodation - self catering this time in the Jardin suite at Casa Granada. This place looked almost too good to be true on the website and when we arrived we had some concerns as they weren't ready for us although we were 45 minutes later than expected. We went for a walk, hoping to find shops and restaurants but it was very residential (close to Balboa Park) but we found a small shop and asked about restaurants but were told there was nothing within walking distance. So we were feeling quite disconcerted by the time we arrived back at Casa Granada. We needn't have worried. Wow! This place is fantastic, huge with fabulous furniture and some lovely artwork. As well as a huge lounge with small kitchen area there is a lovely terrace, huge double ended shower and great lighting, all on dimmers. Massive bedroom too. We found some info and read that there are several shops and restaurants nearby but we'd gone down the wrong road. However, we decided to stay in and have pizza delivered and enjoy the great surroundings. Our delivery was fast and the food good so we had a relaxing evening channel hopping the big TV. We were right under the flight path but the planes stopped at 11pm so not much of a problem.

Tuesday 24th April

We only had juice for breakfast but decided to lunch out and stay in during the evening again. We drove down to the Embarcadero and parked next to the Midway Aircraft Carrier. This was like a dream for Martyn who loves such things so we spent the next 3½ hours touring the carrier! Even I found it really interesting and I think this was probably his favourite place of the entire trip. There's an excellent audio tour as well as real guides at some of the 'stations'. Then we took a 2 hour harbour cruise and saw lots more naval ships etc. It's a very functional, rather than picturesque, harbour, but interesting. Then we walked to Sea Port village, a collection of individual shops and food outlets where we ate burgers and fudge. Well, you can't eat high class food all the time! We returned to the car just within the 10 hour parking limit, a busy day indeed, and in such a perfect climate.