I confess, I put very little thought into what we were going to do today before getting here. I figured we would start in Redondo Beach where Jenny lives, then make our way up the coast to Malibu and see what we could see. Our next stop of the day takes us to the Santa Monica Pier.

It takes us a bit of driving to find parking, but eventually we are able to make our way to the beach. The town itself has plenty of trendy shopping areas and restaurants if you have more time to spend.

Once again, I’m impressed by how many people there are out on the beach on a Monday. Are they all tourists like me? Or is this just the life that Californians live?

Since we have no plans, we head over towards to pier to check it out.

Ok, I have a confession to make. I knew this at some point, but by the time I got to Santa Monica, I had completely forgotten that the Santa Monica Pier is the end of Route 66. It’s such a neat surprise to see the sign right in front of me! So glad we decided to stop here.

After taking selfies with the sign (and with the chorus of Route 66 playing in my head), we wander out to the end of the pier. It has such a carnival atmosphere with all the rides and bright colors everywhere. There are people selling paintings and cotton candy and any other kind of trinket you could ever want. This is clearly the kind of place that caters to tourist.

At the end of the pier, there are people fishing, playing music and just enjoying life. There’s even a restaurant though it’s a bit on the expensive side. I guess that’s price you pay to be able to experience eating over the water.

Jenny takes a selfie with a seagull.

We don’t spend any time going on the rides as we want to keep pushing further north into Malibu, but we do walk out via the Route 66 road. It’s fun to imagine all those travelers from years ago arriving to this place after crossing the country. What they must have seen, how they must have felt.

All told, we spend about an hour and a half exploring the pier. Most of our time limits stem from how long we’re able to pay for parking, rather than any real need to push forward, but since we only have a day together, we want to see as much as possible, too. Now it’s time to finally check out Malibu!