Labor Day at Santa Monica Pier

I have to work every other weekend (which means Friday night and Saturday night), and that makes Tim pretty sad. He gets tired of spending his weekends alone, and who can blame the guy? I don’t like bring home alone either. I had to work Labor Day weekend, but Tim and I both had Monday off work. So, to “make up for lost time,” Tim got a discounted rate at a fancy shmancy hotel on the beach in Santa Monica. Here are some pictures from our “weekend.”

The view of our hotel from the beach:

The view of the beach from our hotel:

Has anyone else noticed that the more expensive a hotel is, the less you get for free? We had to pay an extra 30 bucks to park in their parking lot…

Speaking of extra costs, here’s the food tray and the stocked mini-bar we were careful not to touch. (We called to ask how much the m&m’s were, and when the guy told us they cost 8 bucks, we decided not to ask about the rest…) However, we did take full advantage of the complimentary coffee and tea “pods” they provided for us. Yumm…

Here is our view of the pier from our window. We got a free upgrade to a “partial ocean view,” because they accidentally booked us a room with two double beds. No thanks, man…we want a king! : )

In the morning, we took our breakfast (coffee, blueberry muffin, yogurt, and odwalla smoothie), and lounged in this neat round “chair” by the pool with the ocean view.

Ahh, coffee, reading, sunbathing, and lounging to the new music Tim put on my ipod…

Tim was obviously too relaxed to open his eyes for my long-arm shot.

We headed down to the beach before the crowds so that Tim could play on the playground…err…I mean workout equipment. I didn’t even try…didn’t want to show him up, you know.

I always tell Tim he should be a gymnast- he got to show me all his mad skills that morning. : ) I think all these things were more difficult than they looked…on the monkey bars (or whatever they call them), you have to swing like crazy and use your shoulder muscles to pull yourself back for momentum. Tim was wishing he brought his rock-climbing chalk for the slippery metal handles.

We need one of these playgrounds in Long Beach!

We walked around the beach and headed to the pier around sunset:

We tried to go to Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. for dinner, but the wait was 1 hr., so we found some free wi-fi and used my killer ipod to find other restaurants in the area. We ended up walking a few blocks to Buca Di Beppo, and it was quite nice.

We had lots of fun making different shapes of bokeh in the twinkly lights- more on that when we perfect the technique! (well, as much as we can, anyway).