Venice Beach

Though some might claim Santa Monica beach (of Baywatch fame) as the most popular beach in Los Angeles, my winner for the best beach is Venice beach. This weekend I donned the hat of a tourist guide as I took my friends from Northern California on a Los Angeles tour. Venice beach being my personal favourite, it was fairly easy for me to convince my friends to take a trip to the ocean on Sunday afternoon.

After a very sumptuous meal at Annapoorna in Culver city, the spirits were a little low, but the the cool pacific breeze and the beach smell did the trick. Getting to the beach was the easy part, parking was the most difficult. With most of the lots charging 20$ for a space, we decided to scout for a free parking spot on a nearby street. 30 minutes later, and after a well executed parellel parking, we walked towards the beach.

My heart leapt as I caught the first glimpse of sail boats and surfers through the narrow aisle between those colorful buildings that line Ocean Ave. The beach was very crowded, but nevertheless it was a sight to behold. We decided to maintain a uniformity in terms of beach attire sported by others, as we shed a layer or two and jumped into the cool ocean. Since none of us had swum in ocean before, we let common sense take over, and we decided to restrict ourselves from reaching really deep areas.

The Pacific ocean differs from the other oceans, as it possesse very cool currents. This maintains the temperature in coastal Souther Cal at a cool 70F, even while the rest of the country is sweltering in 100+ heat. This is the primary reason why there are so many vineries in Central California. Also, unlike Atlantic Ocean, Arabian Sea or Bay of Bengal, Pacific has a very shallow bed. We were almost 50 mts into the water, and still the water was only chest high.

On our way back, a rather funny or should I say embarrasing incident happened. Since we had left our pair of change clothes in the trunk of the car, we trudged a wet 1/2 mile back to the car. The presence of 2 towels meant only 2 of us could change at a time ( we shamelessly changed behind a bigsized SUV parked just behind us, on a moderately busy street). Just as when Susu & Sachin handed over the towels to me & Chakka, a blonde pulls over next to our car and asks whether we are leaving the spot. I implore my friend Ketan sitting in the car to ward her away, but Ketan shamelessly said that we would leave in 2 minutes. I thought this would make her drive away, but she replied "Its OK, I'll wait".....as my other friends laughed, me and Chakka threw our towels in the trunk and drove home with a very wet and salty pair of shorts.....