Friday 25th May 2007

We were woken up this morning at about 6am - it was just like the 2 weeks with Mum and Keith! Two of the girls from our dorm we're moving onto New York and they had a flight to catch.

We got ourselves ready as quietly as possible as the other 2 were still sleeping. We almost woke them when Nikki tried getting her bag out of the locker and nearly pulled the whole row over. We then went and had some coffee and toast for breakfast.

When we got back from breakfast there was nothing that could prepare us for the shock that lay in store... Kitty had been cat-knapped. Kitty is Nikki's little pink, neck cushion (that looks like a cat) and she'd left it on the bed. We were away for about 15 minutes, and we suspected the cleaner had stole it, because the beds had been made. We set up a search and rescue mission, and our suspicions we're confirmed when we found Kitty in the cleaners cupboard with all the towels and toilet rolls... thieving swine!

After the whole Kitty-gate scandal, we put her in our locker and went out for a walk. We decided that, as the sun was shining, we'd head for Santa Monica - which is about an hour along the coast. We stopped and had a little play on the swings on the way.

This afternoon, we sat on the Santa Monica Pier and ate our packed lunches (cheese and onion sarnies and nectarines) and then had a look around the town. We then took a slow walk back along the Venice Beach Boardwalk, which has loads of people selling all sorts of things (a bit like St Nicholas Market).

When we got back to our hostel, we turned on our phones and had messages from people (Andy, Mum and Victor Wilks) who had seen us on American Idol - that was cool. We also met the 2 new people in our room. They seem quite nice - they're an Australian couple who have been traveling for about 10 days.

For tea we had mash with cheesy beans and then sat in the lounge / bar area, drinking the free coffee. Afterwards we came to bed and watched an episode of Desperate Housewives on the laptop (no TV here!), before the other girls got back. We then sat chatting with them for a while (well, one of them (Lauren), the other (Jackie Chan) fell asleep!). They seem very cool and Lauren was giving us loads of tips on what to do and where to stay on the rest of our tour.

Kitty's back - and this time she's going nowhere!