Marina del Rey, California

We’ve been staying at Marina del Rey for 5 days now – this place is huge! Imagine a small city on the water, surrounded by more city blocks on the surrounding land and in between the peers. It’s the largest man-made small craft yacht harbor in the world, berthing more than 5000 yachts. It’s probably at least four times larger than Lake Union, our former home, and it has its own traffic lanes in the water, divided by a central ‘sailing only’ waterway.

We’ve stayed at a couple of Yacht Clubs while at the marina– Pacific Mariners YC and California YC. The friendliness of the people here is humbling. There were always friendly hands helping us on and off the dock, we got rides to the grocery store, and were invited for cocktails and dinner aboard our newly found friends boats. We’ve been having a wonderful time!

We also went to check out Venice Beach, with its famous Muscle Beach and Boardwalk and the Santa Monica Pier. We have a couple of theories about Muscle Beach, and currently the most popular one is ‘You must be this big to enter’. We only saw super buff people working out, and we’re wondering if they don’t allow normal people like us to enter.

Well, the sun is out, so I’m off for a dip in the pool :) Cheerios!