You can spend days, weeks and even months driving up and down the California coast. People make trips out of just cruising along Highway 1. But if you are like me and you only have a day, you can also experience the Pacific Coast Highway as well.
This week I took a trip down to sunny Los Angeles and had an urge to take a drive. In a big city like LA there are tons of rental car companies with competitive prices. For only 50 dollars for the day I got my hands on a compact car and made my way out of the city.
Starting in Redondo, I headed through Manhattan beach, along Venice and Santa Monica and eventually joined the Pacific Coast Highway. Probably one of the most beautiful drives I have ever done. With the windows down, I had a cool salt water breeze and blue skies all around me. It was so blissful that I didn’t even mind the stop and go LA traffic for the most part.
About an hour into the drive I made a stop at the Malibu Country Mart. A cute cluster of shops located by the water. I roamed around for a bit and pretended to be able to afford the shopping in there. Next stop up the street, I saw a sign for Pepperdine University. When I was about 12 years old I heard about this school and was adamant that I would one day go there. I’m not sure if this is what I meant, but hey I did get to eventually go.
The campus overlooks the Malibu beach and quite frankly it doesn’t look real. I don’t know how any student manages to get work done here. There also happened to be a 9/11 memorial on the hills surrounding the campus that was moving. A flag to represent each person killed in the attacks. It was beautiful to watch them all blowing in the wind with such a scenic backdrop. Great job, Pepperdine.
Taking into account LA traffic, I headed back into the city. Not without taking a quick side route to ogle the Malibu homes of course. From there back to my hotel it took about another hour, but the drive was so worth it. I made sure to stop at Trader Joe’s because frankly no LA visit is complete without it.
All in all I was gone for about 6 hours. A great day trip that was filled with picture perfect locales. Three days later I am still smiling, and still trying to untangle my hair. Greek curls and high winds don’t exactly go hand in hand.