Top up your tan while you watch body builders and colourful performers doing their stuff along Los Angeles’ quirky urban shoreline, a great escape from the city.
Forget the sun, surf and sand for a while and enjoy Los Angeles at its most ostentatious, loud and eccentric. Feast your eyes on the boisterous human carnival on parade along the Venice Beach Boardwalk. People-watching is a favourite sport in this sun-drenched bohemian enclave of artists, musicians, poets, singers, skateboarders and jugglers. The spectacle includes daring chain-sawing acrobats and fire-breathing cyclists. Just remember that performers expect to be tipped if you watch most of their show or take their photograph.If you need some time-out from this visual overload, make your way along the 2.4 kilometre stretch of boardwalk and do a bit of tourist shopping browse the stalls, shops and stands packed with souvenirs, cheap sunglasses, T-shirts and sandals. Find out what your future holds by visiting a fortune teller or get a non-committal temporary tattoo.Further along the boardwalk, you’ll find Muscle Beach, aptly named, as this is the place where Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno (of “Incredible Hulk” fame) once flexed theirs. This is an outdoor gym where you can watch the toned, honed and bronzed pump iron while acrobats contort their bodies into impossible positions and shapes that are enough to make your eyes water. If you want, you can join in the posing. Buy yourself a day pass for about $10 at the Venice Beach Recreations and Parks Office on Ocean Front Walk and then do your stuff in front of the passing crowds.For a brief respite from this flamboyant spectacle, head to the beach, a five kilometre stretch of clean, well-maintained and manicured sand. Life guards patrol the beach during daylight hours, so feel free to dive in to cool off if you’ve had enough of soaking up the rays. Hire a surf or body board and catch a few waves, taking care to look out for other riders.LA’s Mediterranean climate makes Venice Beach a good place to be for most of the year however, it gets incredibly crowded in the summer. It is around 30 kilometres from downtown LA on the coast between Santa Monica and Marina Del Rey. There’s plenty of parking right next to the beach.
