Malibu Barbie

After a quiet Christmas recovering from my annual crappy cold, I took full advantage of the blue skies and warm weather and hopped in the motor to cruise up the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) to Malibu.

As you know from earlier posts I love the PCH down in Orange County, but this PCH was a whole different ball game. Not for one minute am I suggesting it was as impressive as the PCH up near Monterey and Big Sur, but the hills meet the ocean in pretty lovely fashion, as demonstrated here: 

I drove up the ocean road for about an hour north of Santa Monica, taking in the backs of multi-million dollar houses that drop down into the ocean whilst trying to grasp peek a boo views of the ocean, before huge gaps in houses showed off the vast expanse of my favourite ocean. 

The road was pretty quiet considering how lovely the day was.  It was fun burning off Bentleys and BMWs at the lights, but I cannot deny that being in a soft top Mercedes would have been pretty fabulous (not that my friend's Ford Focus is without its charms...) The only downside was there seemed to be no radio signal for most of the journey. So it meant listening to Florence and the Machine the whole way. After the 4th play of the album, I was a little tired of it, but hey if that is the worst thing about the day I can live with that!!! 

I smiled the whole time I was driving out to the Ventura County line.

There is a big naval base there where they test out missiles in a 36,000 square mile area of sea. There were two radar planes flying around, with big circular domes on top of them. They looked more like the USS Enterprise than planes. 

I stopped off and took some photos of the missiles (which were massive) and a couple of planes (which were even bigger) The Tomcat was particularly cool!

The drive back to Malibu going south was even more dramatic than driving north. I popped into a place called Paradise Cove where there is a cutesy little beach and a touristy cafe. It has been used in a number of TV shows, commercials and movies - including Baywatch and an old favourite of mine from when I was a kid, The Rockford Files. 

I stopped off to have a beer and only then realised that it was $3 for parking if your bill was $25. Fortunately the bar tender took pity on me, and validated me anyway (I had only been there 30 minutes!)

Every day in California makes me smile, but days like today literally make my heart sing...If you haven't been to California, I would suggest you go in 2013, or at least plan in 2013 to go there in 2014. You won't regret it I promise...