Newport Beach - The O.C.

Drove further South today to end up in O.C. (Orange County) and Newport Beach where the series is set. Awesome weather although strange to see so many oil platforms and drilling equipment from the beaches. Set off early this morning from our motel, because it was so bad. Vicky had decided to make up for earlier extavagance by going for a super-cheap one, oh boy it was pretty grim. Drove to Santa Monica to see more beautiful beaches and a nice pier, couldn't stop singing "Santa Monica Bouvelard" from the Cheryl Crow song. We took one of the electric rides from the beach to downtown, waited five minutes for it to go after all the passengers had got on, then it crawled into downtown, it was very funny sitting there thinking we could have walked faster than this bus. We stopped for lunch in an English tea room, nice to have real bacon again. They also had a shop selling just English goods, we both realised that maybe we missed some things already after seeing the PG tips, Fry's Chocolate cremes, Branston pickle and Heinz sponges in a tin. Then we drove past lots of beaches we have heard of: Venice Beach (where the Muscle men work out on the beach, drove past Malibu's 27 miles of gorgeous beach before coming to L.A. and Long Beach, Redondo Beach, etc. We didn't stay so that we could get a glimpse of the O.C. When we get back from Vegas we have scheduled a few days in L.A.