Day 3

Today really was our first big adventure. After another early wake up call from Holly and Louis we ate our breakfast and packed up our beach bags ready to hit the road for Malibu. The road however in this case happened to be the Interstate 405 which if you haven't ever seen before, makes the M25 look like the B1438 in Melton. Thankfully, our superb car and trusty navigation system did almost all the work and after only a few wrong turns the car filled with 'oohs' and 'aahs' as we turned onto the Pacific Coast Highway with Santa Monica beach in our view.

Our first stop of the day, was the Malibu Lagoon State Beach. After paying $12 to park, we walked along the dust track toward the beach not knowing what or who would greet us around the corner. We soon realised that this beach was a surfing hot spot as a sea of black bodies bobbed up and down on their surfboards in front of us. The beach wasn't the prettiest or the cleanest but being a Saturday it was full of local families, namely men, eager to catch some waves with their wives and children left soaking up the sunshine and playing on the sand.

After another home made lunch (ham and cheese bagels for children and wholewheat tortilla wrap with cottage cheese and avocado for me) we decided to seek out another beach towards Santa Monica that had would hopefully be a better swimming location for the children. On the walk back to the car I took this great pic of Louis sporting his 'surf dude' t-shirt standing alongside two genuine surf dudes!

Back in the car, the driving was beginning to come naturally despite it only being my 2nd ever attempt at driving on the right. We stopped at what we thought was Santa Monica but actually turned out to be the Will Rogers beach in an area called Pacific Palisades. A very friendly local took delight in telling us all about the area and couldn't contain her excitement at discovering we were 'home exchangers' referring, as everyone does to the film, The Holiday.

The beach was busy, but with every right as its vast expanse of white sand and crystal blue waters lured everyone in. Will soon made friends with a boy around his own age and they spent the entire afternoon diving headfirst into 10ft waves. Louis and Holly were less happy to begin with as the verocity of the waves meant that they were limited to playing along the shoreline but it didn't take long for them to make the best of the situation using their imaginations to come up with games to play together.  Misa and I on the other hand couldn't help smiling when we spotted a rather handsome red-shorted lifeguard, even contemplating faking our own drowning to catch his attention ha ha. 

Conscious of the growing traffic and my need for a nice glass of sauvignon and soda, we packed up the car just after 3.30pm and made our way back to Hermosa, stopping only at Vons on the way, to replenish food and of course, wine! All a little weary and definitely a little pinker than when we had left this morning we are looking forward to another relaxing evening in our new temporary home.