Day 1 - The road out of LA!
- Paul Mullan
- Apr 23, 2017
- 1 min read
So we were back at Balboa first thing to walk around the island and then headed up the Pacific Coast Highway to Longbeach before cutting back to the 405 to Santa Monica for our official start at the Pier.
It was a slow crawl along Santa Monica Blvd to cruise down Rodeo Drive (check out the Bugatti!) and on to Pasadena.
From there it was the four tunnels that were the first Parkway (Freeway) this side of the Mississippi.
The bumber-to-bumper traffic meant most of us missed the historic Aztec Hotel although Russ and Liz did get there... and still beat us to the Mission Inn at Riverside.
Not strictly on Route 66 the largest historic 'mission revival style' building in the USA claims amongst many things to be the place where the first Californian Orange Tree was planted!
The brains behind the Hotel that these days spans an entire block comes from engineer Christopher Miller and later his son Frank who also had a weakness for Macaws.... a tradition that's still maintained.
Amazing architecture to wrap up our first day on the road - next stop - Vegas!
