A weekend around Santa Monica
Unfortunately I think I got a cold on the flight over, so I spent most of saturday day resting. But I ventured out that night to see my neighbourhood, Santa Monica! Great area, very relaxed and residential in feel. Somewhat ritzy too - some nice cars come by. Everyone is very friendly, says hello to you in the street. Americans (around here anyway) seem fine! ;)
We're very close to east ocean ave, which is the main road with a nice walking path/lookout going along the steep cliff that leads down to the water. If you want to actually get to the water, it's a bit more of a work (driving would be easy). Went out to a cool sushi bar that night. All the restaurants I've been to so far have both tables to sit at, as well as the bar - for eating and drinking. Nice to mingle with the other randoms.
Sunday was action day. In a massive FAIL I got an AT&T prepaid phone+sim with data (!!) with the goal of swapping the sim into my iphone. Fail - SIM is device locked. Lame :( So I'm still without a local sim, and have turned off roaming data as I already have a massive roaming bill from a whole 20MB usage... I digress...
I checked out the 3rd Street Promenade, a shopping and street entertainment area. Music, shops and all that. Cool sunday afternoon tourist place. Visited the apple store there (again.. made it in just before closing on friday after work - had to see a certain new device!) to have another play with an iPad - impressed. It was also a big news day in apple land with the leaked photos, so uh, nice photo of an iPad on engadget!
Shot some video of the street performers too!
I think the plan for this weekend will be a road trip up to Santa Barbara!
