The Veranda at Casa Del Mar - Stay Classy, Santa Monica

According to wikipedia, a veranda is a roofed, but open, porch on the outside of central building. Since wikipedia is tied with google for the smartest, most informationally accurate thing on the web, I would have to say that The Veranda at Casa Del Mar is pulling a fast one on clueless us. The Veranda looks out over the ocean as if it were a beachfront porch – as if! – but it is inside the hotel.

Thank God for The Delicious and wikipedia, no?

Despite The Veranda's deception, which doesn't really apply to me because I've only ever known it as "Casa Del Mar," and its seemingly recent attraction of a "Sunset West" crowd, I still love my Casa. That's "still," the conjunction, interchangeable with “nevertheless” as it applies to aforementioned deceit and a sea of blazers worn over $80 rocker-chic, graffiti art t-shirts and jeans. It’s also “still,” the adverb, synonymous with "to this day," because not only am I perpetually stuck at the conjunction junction, but I fell in love with Casa the first time I went there a very long (almost ten years?) ago.