Toes in the Sand

If any of you guessed that the last day of our California vacation was spent on the beach, you’d be right!

Santa Monica beach to be exact. We finally decided to ditch the public buses and rent a car, which is not easy to do by the way if you’re under 25. But there’s always loops you can jump through!

The 3-day LA Go Pass we bought was really a good buy after all. If you’re going to any major city, I highly suggest looking into a Go Card..we saved over $150 on all the attractions we went to, including today’s Santa Monica Pier.

It was a beautiful day in the high 80’s and clear blue skies as far as you could see!!

Before we explored..we hit up McDonald’s. Now I am not at all a fan of fast food, McDonald’s to be particular, but we didn’t feel like walking miles to find a sit down restaurant and we were on the last day of our vacation, so saving money was crucial.

After debating, I settled on the Southwestern Chicken Salad minus the cheese and crunchy tortilla strips. I also got the fat-free balsamic dressing and some apple dippers on the side. Not bad for a McDonald’s salad!

Now back to the beach…

Pretending I have enough muscles to pose for Muscle Beach..

I’ve always loved the ocean..

The famous Santa Monica Pier Ferris Wheel

Happy being beach bums..

I even embraced the chance for free marketing ha ha!

Time to ride the Ferris wheel…

Just in time for the sunset…

Our last California sunset…

And even though the sun went down, we still had a few hours before heading back to the hotel, so we made our way to the Santa Monica Place for some nighttime shopping.

But first we wanted to grab some food so we could say that we ate at Pacific Park on the famous pier;

“Pacific Park® frequently serves as the location for popular entertainment productions including television shows featuring Alias, American Idol, Monk and NYPD Blue; feature films such as First Daughter, Fat Albert and Jarhead; television commercials such as Joe Boxer and Sierra Mist; still photography shoots including Vogue magazine; and music videos featuring Jessica Simpson.”

We chose to eat at the Harbor Grill which had a little bit of everything.

I had the veggie burger with sweet potato fries, which was a great choice. My only complaint is the bun was much too doughy, so I ditched the top half.

The Santa Monica Place is a huge shopping venue only 3 blocks from the pier.

There was tons of people everywhere, and lucky for me, a Pinkberry too!!

I got the coconut flavor with tons of fresh berries—perfect snack to power me through the rest of the night!

And check out this awesome garbage can we stumbled upon..I so wanted to take it home!

And then came Monday…sad day.

We had to head back to Minnesota, but we were overall so thankful that we literally got to cram everything we had planned on doing into the days we were there. It was an exhausting trip, going everyday from 7 am to 12am, but hey when you’re on the west coast, there’s things to do and places to go all the time!

Hope you all enjoyed the re-caps of my October 2010 California trip! Now things will get back to scheduled on the blog, keep your eye out for lots of fall goodies! :-)

What’s the best vacation you’ve been on?