We sleep in (yay, first day to do that!). Which still means that I'm up before teens doing my meditation and prayer and going for a walk. The teens basically don't move until after we eat uninspiring sandwiches in the room.
Then it's the basic walk from Santa Monica to Venice Beach (we called it a half mile to get them moving, it's really a couple). The girls loved the street vendors and shopping. The boys got sick of it.
Eventually we go out on the beach at the northern tip of Venice and plop down. The kids get completely soaked and swim in their clothes (although we had suits with us, they couldn't be bothered to put them on a strategy in which they were ultimately vindicated as I trudged barefoot (what could I have been thinking?!) to a horrible nightmare of a bathroom with God knows what on the floor, no toilet paper, a long line, everything you imagine in a Venice bathroom ... and less...to pee and change into my suit.
Bill heads back as I join the kids for a short swim. Too cold in the breeze to wait to dry off, we do the wetsuit death march back to S.M. If they had been younger they would've been crying the whole way. At this age they were miserably catatonic.
Showers, naps and frantic Googling and Yelping produce an acceptable French restaurant on the Third Street Promenade called Monsieur Marcel--French-style service but a lovely outdoor cafe with solid food.
From their the kids headed back the Ocean View for reading and electronics. Bill and I were off to see The Arsonists at KOAN at the Odyssey in nearby West L.A. It's a recent resurrection/translation of a WWII era swiss play which is, albeit didactic, fascinating, funny and oddly applicable to the current times. I recommend it to people who really love theater, not to people who actually only like plays and movies because it's a bit contrived and stagy for that set.
Sigh, nice to sleep in the same bed twice...
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