First Class California - Day 11 Los Angeles

Day 11 - Los Angeles (Sunday 26th May 2013)

Our penultimate hotel and we had unpacked full for the first time since we had arrived in the States. After a lie in and the normal morning routine we headed down to breakfast in the hotel, which took ages. This was partly due to it being a holiday weekend, as it did get better, but it was never fast.

We finally left the hotel for Hollywood around 11:20 and after a short drive in little traffic, we parked up at the Hollywood and Highland car park. The plan was to do a Starline tour of Hollywood stars homes , so there office was the first stop and we were booked on the 1pm tour, meaning we had an hour to kill.

The Hollywood and Highland shopping mall, had been filled out since 2008 the last time we had visited and we popped into Sweet (deciding to come back after the tour) and Hard Rock (where I got a few pins), before heading out onto Hollywood Boulevard.

I have to admit that you have to do Hollywood Boulevard on a tourist trip to LA, but the crowds were heavy and it is not the greatest neighbourhood in the world. But we saw the Chinese theatre, some of the walk of fame, popped into the Soda fountain and a tourist shop to get some presents for our nephew and niece.

After the wander, we headed back to the Starline location and found our ride for the 2 hour tour.

The tour was entertaining and our driver was fun, till near the end when it became a slight begging plead for a tip. Most of the actual tour in the hills all you really see are gates but it does give an idea on how small some of the these properties are, and how much they must all cost.

For example this is Bruno Mars' house.

and this is Katy Perry's which is on the market for $10M.

After the tour we were in need of lunch, but there was nothing in the area that grabbed our hunger, so we decided to find an old favourite "Rosa Mexicano", now we had been introduced in DC a few years ago by a good friend, and had also visited there location in New York 2 years ago, So we drove off via BabyCakesNYC to grab some cakes for Celia, and headed back round to Beverly Hills and Sunset Boulevard for Rosa. The parking was a bit interesting as we missed the entrance to the Car Park as we drove past the first time and had to turn around and try again, but we did make it and they treated us royally. After we mentioned Celia's food intollences they made special version of the Crab Empanadas (behind my Nacho stack)

The rest of the food was just a good and they even made a special desert for Celia with no Gluten or Dairy.

After we had finished we had to hunt around to pay for the parking, as most of the machines seemed to be faulty, but we did drive back to the hotel, shattered from the heat of the day and questioning our plans for the week.

The late lunch was supplemented by a cheesecake from the Cheesecake factory just around the marina from the hotel and we had an early night, as tomorrow we were off to Warner Brothers to see a studio.

First Class California - Day 10 Santa Barbara

Day 10 - Santa Barbara (Saturday 25th May 2013)

We awoke in the 5th different hotel of the trip and with a week before we would be back in London, after the morning routines and a lovely pancake breakfast for me in the hotel restaurant.

We loaded up the car yet again and headed off for Los Angeles, or well Marina Del Ray to be exact and as that would only take a couple of hours we decided to divert on this the Saturday of the Memorial day weekend and go to an Outlet mall for some serious shopping.

We arrived at the Camarillo Premium Outlets just after 11am and wandered into more stores than was safe for our credit cards and slowly loaded the car more and more with brown bags and more and more stuff.

We had been to every corner of the mall by 5pm and after Celia had grabbed a salad from Panera bread confusing the seller by not wanting cheese, fries or bread with the salad, but taking an apple, we headed out to In n Out Burgers for me to grab a Double Double with Lettuce and Onions and Fries and a Milkshake for Lunch (ish) which we ate our meals in the car as a true drive thru experience.

After eating we headed back down to Highway 1 and drove through Malibu and Santa Monica to Marina del Ray and the Jamaica Bay Inn which was our base for the next 4 nights. Our room was huge, having a bedroom part.

a Lounge part

A large bathroom with Shower and bath.

and a great view of the marina.

and finally what we thought was a wardrobe turned out to be another bathroom.

After sorting ourselves out and relaxing for a while we had to decide where to go for dinner, Celia wanted Cuban so a quick Google and Foursquare found a nice Cuban just a short walk away at Mercedes bar and Grill. Our run of good food continued with great authentic cuban food and a wonderful atmosphere.

Tomorrow the plan was to head up to Hollywood and look at doing a tour.

First Class California - Day 9 Monterey

Day 9 - Monterey (Friday 24th May 2013)

Day 9 started slightly differently with the Sunrise breaking into the room, as it seemed to good a chance to leave the curtains open facing the ocean. We had a slow rise and morning routine, grabbing some breakfast in the restaurant, before Celia had arranged a Pedicure and I hit the gym for a attempt at a run on a treadmill overlooking the pacific.

We finally checked out and left the hotel around 10am and headed around the Monterey Peninsular. First up was Sunset Point.

and from there we entered the 17 Mile Drive, this is a toll road but they do provide a guide to what you are seeing as you drive around and the views are stunning and worth the $10 or so we had to pay. We continued arround to Pebble Beach golf course as at the complex there we could grab some fruit and water for the next stage of the drive.

I am not much of a golfer, but the resort at Pebble beach was impressive and included a collection of trophies that have been played for there, including the US Open.

After a while we had seen our share and decided to take the top down on the car and head off down highway 1.

I can include some photo's but like Yosemite before on this trip, they really don't do the scenery justice and I would just say that you need to do this drive at some point in your life, I would not try and get from Monterey to Santa Barbara as we did as that is a LONG LONG drive and if we ever try again, I would stay for a couple of nights at the Monterey hotel, maybe doing the 17 mile drive again on one of those days, maybe on Bicycles this time and definitely split the highway 1 drive at around Pismo beach.

But that's not what we did and so off we went down the coast. just pausing at Big Sur for a pit stop and stopping the car every so often to admire the scenery.

The actual highway goes through different areas, you start with the wild coastline, before heading into the forests around Big Sur and then back to more dramatic coast and then into a more gentle wilderness as we headed into San Simeon. We had planned to stop there for lunch, but as we turned off the highway we realised how small a town it was and the one store did not have anything Celia could eat so we knew we had to head on to Cambria. We did stop at the beach to use the restrooms but did time this badly as a school group was just leaving and every child wanted to change out of their swimming clothes one at a time.

We also stopped at the Elephant Seal beach just before we got to Cambria, the smell was overpowering but just to see them all was a great experience if a little cold as the heat of the day had been blown away by the sea breeze. So we lifted the roof back up for the next part of the drive.

Arriving at Cambria at 4pm, we struggled to find anywhere open for lunch, until almost about to run out of town having walked back to the point we drove in we noticed that the Main Street Grill was open, this was a BBQ joint but the food was hearty and tasty and hit the spot. Celia again had a salad, and I had the Tri-Tip Sandwich.

After Cambria, Highway one got a bit boring, the grand vista's had gone and with the expected time of arrival in Santa Barbara heading towards 8pm we switched to the 101 for speed. Making up some time we made it to our hotel for the night The Harbor View Inn just after 7pm.

After a quick unpack of the car and impressed by the size of the room, and from the balcony we could see the sea, even if we hadn't paid for a sea view, we headed into the Harbour for dinner. A colleague at Celia's work had suggested Brophy Brothers so that's where we were going. After a bit of a wait (as the place is tiny) and it was high school graduation day and we had loads of family groups also looking for somewhere to celebrate we got a table. The food is great and the whole place has a buzz, but the music style made us feel like it was the 80's. I had the Fish and Chips, Celia the Mahi Mahi.

After dinner and a nice walk back to the hotel we slept soundly till the morning.

First Class California - Day 8 San Francisco

Day 8 - San Francisco (Thursday 23rd May 2013)

After a week in the states this was the start of our Pacific coast highway adventure and the drive that was the central plan for this trip. The morning was delayed by a lie in and we headed to Lori's Diner that we had seen the previous morning, but as we entered we asked about  Soya milk so that Celia could have a coffee (and probably some oatmeal) but were told they did not do Soya, so we switched back to Sears Fine Foods (which is owned by the same group) as we had enjoyed the breakfast there so much the previous day.

After being fed we decided to head back to the hotel and head off for the drive, this car we were picking up at the Airport so after checking out we got the Hotel to arrange a town car and explained to the driver to take us to the Avis rental car area rather than any of the actual terminals.

The queues are the airport were horrendous and as all the hire companies are in the same building it was a mass of humanity in there all trying to get a car. We were offered an upgrade to a Jeep with a hard roof, but declined as it sounded like if we had the roof off we would have nowhere to put luggage as we needed to carry the roof. So we were back with the Mustang equivalent as this time it would be a Chevrolet. Paperwork finally done we headed into the garage to find our car, it was a lovely white hard top and the boot looked a good size, till we started to work out how to drop the roof and then the boot would only contain a briefcase, so that was never going to work as we had 2 large wheeled suitcases, a large duffel-bag and 2 carry on bags. So I started to head back to the office space, but had a helpful Avis employee ask what was wrong and we showed him the bags and the car and explained that we had managed to get all this luggage (well almost - as we did have a small bit of extra shopping) into a Mustang. He said to wait a minute and headed off with the paperwork, returning a few minutes later with a blue mustang, RESULT. So finally we loaded in our bags and headed out the airport car park and headed south.

We stopped in Palo Alto as Celia had been there a couple of weeks previously whilst visiting Google and it had been a pretty neighbourhood. We parked up at the start of the main shopping street and had a wander, It is very pretty but the star find was a shop called Rocket Fizz, which is a US version of Cybercandy or American Soda so selling stranger sweets and soda, its weird to see Cadburys and other UK chocolates as obscure but I did pick up some Wonka Kazoozles which are my favourite. Although it was midday due to the late breakfast, we just grabbed some fruit as a snack and decided to carry on to Santa Cruz for lunch.

We left Palo Alto and took the 82 past Stanford University, going up with the 85 and then onto the 17 for the route through the mountains.
By the time we got to the Santa Cruz it was 3pm as the drive had been a bit longer than expected but we managed to find some parking and tried to find somewhere to eat, heading towards the beach front.

We finally found a small cafe, South Beach pizza company where we could get some food, celia had a nice salad and I had a burger and fries. Fed and watered we headed back to the car and started the drive down Highway 1 to Monterey, for this leg we had the top down, which at the start when we were stuck in traffic felt like a good idea, but as we got closer to Monterey and the speeds went up it got very cold with the sea breeze.

We arrived at Monterey and found our hotel the Monterey Plaza Hotel and Spa, and wow this was luxury, we drove into the car port and they took the luggage and valet parked the hotel. We knew we had splashed out on this hotel and the room was huge, but the view was the main selling point.

we almost tried to work out if we could stay here for a second night, but the route had been picked out and this was 1 of two single night stays so we didn't really unpack. We did just book dinner in the resturant and had a wonder down Cannery Row as the shops were closing till it was time for dinner.

It was interesting to see how this area had redeveloped itself and the strange juxterposition between the tacky stores on the land side and some very posh hotels on the water side of the road. It was strange that although we had only been driving most the day and had a lie in we were shattered and we knew that tomorrows drive was the longest of the trip, so we had arranged a 7:30 dinner.

We were given window seats and were able to spot a couple of dolphins playing in the bay whilst we waited for our food.

Celia had some lobster and I had some Shrimp, the food was great but the shows from the dolphins was the star of the evening.