Solvang, California.
Another day of excellent, just right weather, although toward the end of the day we ran into some fine mist coming in from the ocean, which led to some mild rain and, for a while, slightly foggy conditions. But that wasn’t until the end of the day as evening was coming on.
As we drove out of Los Angeles, again knowing that we could have stayed here at least another couple of days, we passed by a nice little park, Echo Park.
Russ definitely wanted a take it easy, let’s see where the day takes us approach to what we’re doing, with no hurry, arriving in San Simeon for the night whenever we arrive. That was fine with me, and we stopped in Santa Barbara for a while, had lunch lunch at La Paloma Cafe, “a downtown Santa Barbara restaurant with the feel of your favorite neighborhood hangout,” which, actually was very good.
A town like Santa Barbara is always nice to to walk, but It’s especially nice in this lovely warm weather. We strolled around State Street, now a pedestrian-only downtown that I walked just a few weeks ago, and we really just enjoyed the ambiance of the town, as well as going into several stores.
The town is so nice to walk, with great streets and lovely buildings. At times, it could be mistaken for a European town, with its Spanish and Mexican origins and its Spanish style architecture.
We stayed a while in Santa Barbara, but time was marching on, and we continued on north to Solvang, Dutch Capital of America, where Bev and i visited a few years ago (although I can’t find any of those photos).
Solvang was created in 1911 by Dutch settlers. It’s a small town of about 6,000, and clearly a significant tourist spot. It is a lovely town, but with all its Dutch style buildings and businesses spread all over town it’s also a bit DisneyLand. Still, definitely a lovely place to visit and stay a while. Again, the lovely weather makes it even more inviting to just stroll around.
Then we continued north to San Simeon, by way of Cambria. But by 6:40 it’s getting very dusky, so it was dark by the time we got to Cambria, but the ride there was lovely even as the dusk was descending, with lovely and interesting ocean views, although no where to pull over and take photos. The heavy mist rolling in across the Pacific, obscuring it’s entire horizon line, almost looked like a giant tidal wave/tsunami slowly, almost in slow motion, rolling in toward land. It did eventually hit land, but in the form of a misty rain and low mist on the ground, and thankfully wasn’t a tsunami after all.
We ate dinner in Cambria at Robin’s, as Marg suggested, and had a nice meal in a nice joint with a nice feel. I noticed Robin’s when I was here a few weeks ago. That was during the day, but it was jumping then, and looked good.
Anyhow, it was too dark to walk around after we ate, and starting to to get a little cool, so we went on to San Simeon and our hotel, just a few minutes down the road. I hope we’ll return to Cambria in the morning so Russ can get an actual look at the place, and maybe also Harmony, which Marg also recommended. There are also some nice hikes around San Simeon, and the area where the Elephant Seals hang out, so I hope we’ll have time to check that out also.