This included plenty of walking around the Marina del Rey boat channel, Venice Beach, Palisades Park in Santa Monica, The Third Street Promenade, and one of my favorite streets, Adelaide Drive, with spectacular views of Santa Monica Canyon, the Santa Monica Mountains, and the Pacific Ocean. On Thursday night, we showed up pretty late at Natalee Thai on Venice Blvd., and had a really good meal.

If we had had more time, we might have gone to the Getty Center, and yes, even into town where, as we know, the possibilities to show off cool stuff to visitors are endless.  It’s part of what makes living here so much fun, and it’s absolutely contagious.

Tomorrow, Esotouric, the same unconventional tour company responsible for “The Real Black Dahlia Crime Bus” and the “Crawling Down Cahuenga: Tom Waits’ LA” tour, will be leading an excursion through Los Angeles as Bukowski lived it in, “Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski’s Los Angeles.”

Charles Bukowski 1920-1994

A dirty realist, Bukowski’s writing was heavily influenced by his hometown of Los Angeles and now you too can get a first hand glimpse of the gritty world he inhabited.

It’s not too late to sign up for tomorrow’s Bukowski tour, as they take reservations up to the morning of the tour. So stock up on scotch and cigarettes and visit: http://www.esotouric.com/buk-3-14-09 to reserve your seat.

If you can’t make tomorrow’s tour, I highly recommend that you visit http://www.esotouric.com/ to check out the dozens of other strange and interesting tours Esotouric has lined up in the coming months. Also, for the budget minded, KCRW and KPCC members can take 15% off regular bus tour tickets.

“The people walk with such an indifference I begin to hate them, but then again I’ve never really been fond of anything.”

- Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969), Charles Bukowski