SANTA MONICA, CA :: Kristie and I strolled through Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade a couple times during our week in California. It’s a pedestrian-only avenue spanning several blocks, filled with tourists and buskers. A variety of shops and restaurants line the streets, including Kidrobot and Barney’s Beanery.
Kidrobot is an adult toy store, but not that kind of adult toy store. The small shop is filled with cute and/or scary figurines, some of which were pretty pricey. I looked for a Domokun doll, but didn’t find any. Puzzle Zoo is another neat toy store on Third Street, with a much larger inventory and many more collectible figurines, including original Star Wars toys and Lord of the Ring sculptures, but again to my disappointment, no Domokuns in sight.
For dinner, we loved Barney’s Beanery. It’s just a fun place to hang out with an overwhelming large menu and all sorts of Californian memorabilia covering the walls, ceilings and tables. There are dozens of monitors of all different sizes tuned to different sport events. On our second day there, we caught the final minutes of the World Cup quarter-final match between Germany and Italy. The entire restaurant erupted when during stoppage time, Italy scored the only two goals of the entire game in just as many minutes.
Kidrobot is an adult toy store, but not that kind of adult toy store. The small shop is filled with cute and/or scary figurines, some of which were pretty pricey. I looked for a Domokun doll, but didn’t find any. Puzzle Zoo is another neat toy store on Third Street, with a much larger inventory and many more collectible figurines, including original Star Wars toys and Lord of the Ring sculptures, but again to my disappointment, no Domokuns in sight.
For dinner, we loved Barney’s Beanery. It’s just a fun place to hang out with an overwhelming large menu and all sorts of Californian memorabilia covering the walls, ceilings and tables. There are dozens of monitors of all different sizes tuned to different sport events. On our second day there, we caught the final minutes of the World Cup quarter-final match between Germany and Italy. The entire restaurant erupted when during stoppage time, Italy scored the only two goals of the entire game in just as many minutes.
