Sunday 5th March – Up coast road No 1

We all caught up with some sleep and had a lie-in, checking out last minute at noon.

We had agreed, no more driving through central LA, we would do a slow drive up Route 1 – the Pacific Coast Highway – instead.  They had warned of a change in the weather but the heavy rain luckily came whilst we were driving, so by the time we arrived at Venice Beach it was fine, sunny but extremely windy and fresh!  We forgot our woes of yesterday when we bagged free on-street parking a short walk from the sea front.  We headed to see muscle beach, but there was no one working out as you would have got whipped by the sand constantly.

Bright, but extremely windy, Venice Beach

This afternoon’s quest was to find me a French Dip sandwich to continue my sandwich tour.  For the first time, we had real issues trying to find somewhere that did the famous sandwich!  No restaurants in Venice Beach did them at all.  Luckily, Becky had done some research this morning and found a place on Santa Monica Blvd that may assist – Misfits restaurant.  Instead of trying our luck in finding another parking spot in Santa Monica, we caught a short Uber taxi to the restaurant instead.  The lengths we go to for a sandwich, eh?!  Well, it was worth it, it was an awesome restaurant: 

Inside the Misfit restaurant

Three little bundles of happiness - one each! (With a teacup of Pimms on the side)

Attempting, but probably failing, to eat delicately...

They did three mini French dip sliders as a dish so we shared it as a starter – it tasted amazing. 9.5 out of 10.  The beef was melt-in-the-mouth tender, there was some kind of onion puree in there and then there was the bowl of gravy to have a dip in.  The only issue was getting the food into your mouth before it started disintegrating.  We then we went on to share fries, a portion of macaroni and cheese (with chorizo topping) AND each had another burger! Other than the $250 Steak in Vegas, it was the best food so far, I think. Our dining out has certainly improved since we have a guest!

We walked down to Santa Monica beach.  It was beautiful but too cold to hang about for long.  So we Uber’d it back to the RV and rang the Malibu RV resort, which had spaces and was only 30 minutes up the coast. 

View of Santa Monica beach and pier

This is the very arch that Forrest Gump runs through on his first run to the coast... check it against the film!

In no particular rush, we paused for sunset and went on to our amazing RV stop for the night.  At $55 is was cheaper than our LA site but THIS was what a coastal campsite should look like (see tomorrow’s pics)!  We were perched on the hillside above the shoreline, so went out with candles and a beer to enjoy the view for as long as we could before the cold got to us. 
One of our neighbours, ‘Nick the Greek’, came to say hello.  I reckon he must be the fastest talker in the west!  Our other French-Canadian neighbour had no chance at understanding him, so gave in.  Simon and Nick the Greek had a funny conversation about films, where they were clearly telling each other that they would really enjoy this film called ‘pirate radio’ (Nick) or ‘the boat that rocked’ (Simon).  To the observer it became clear that they were talking about the very same film, just under different titles, but neither of them realised until later when Nick visited us with his phone having googled it.  The guy rambled onto various different, completely unconnected topics.  I was struggling to keep up.  He travels alone and clearly gets lonely so I feel bad that we were all a little overwhelmed by him.  The guilt worsened when he came over again later, bringing us a plate of spare dolmades he had made.  Were we being paranoid or was it just the fact that we have been warned about Greeks bearing gifts?!  They went in the fridge anyway, as we were all still full from our earlier dining.