CA report: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
Jul. 14th, 2005 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittenscribbleCurrently posting from K's cousins' place in San Jose. It took a while for us to figure out how the Apple laptop liked to communicate with the wireless network, but K's programmer cousin happily tackled the problem until we finally managed a connection last night.
We had intended to head out early on Monday but cooking breakfast for my aunt turned into a hours-long affair; breakfast was wonderful and filling but we didn't end up leaving until noon. Therefore the only thing we saw in downtown Los Angeles was the Walt Disney Concert Hall, an architectural wonder that from the outside looks more like a collection of metal planes than a building, and from the inside is warm and wooden and glowing. We parked at a meter that gave us three minutes for every dime, which we considered more of a bargain than the $3 for 15 minute parking garages. Bit crazy, that.
In the afternoon we headed up to Valencia, where K's friend B was offering to put us up for the night. The famed LA traffic did not appear, making the trip a measly 45-minute sprint and leaving us stranded in Valencia until B got off work. We had ice cream and relaxed in the shade. B and his parents took us to all-you-can-eat sushi, where one sits at the bar, makes demands of the sushi chef, and generally stuffs oneself with expensive fish in an effort to make it "worth the price". I ate until satiation and beyond. Particularly enjoyed the specialty rolls, including a salmon skin roll that was served with a generous helping of bonito flakes. Afterwards, we relaxed in one of the pools in B's condo community until the guard kicked us out at closing.
We got up bright and early Tuesday for the drive up the coast. As we left Valencia, we passed groves and groves of orange trees. Roadside stands promised fresh oranges, avocados, and limes; unfortunately most of them weren't open yet. When we got to Ventura the mission wasn't open either, so we snapped some pictures of the outside and moved on.
We made it to Santa Barbara around 10am, and found fog clinging to the wharf and the coastline. We saw the mission there and wandered about for a bit, waiting for the fog to burn off. K got a restaurant recommendation from the man staffing the visitor's center: a Mexican place that looked like a dive, but was apparently well-known enough that people would drive there from miles around. It took us a bit of trouble to find it, but the food was fantastic - chorizos and barbecued meat inside tortillas, beans floating in broth, guacamole with generous chunks of avocado. We were in line behind a woman who'd heard about the place from all the way up in Seattle.
Our next inland stop was San Luis Obispo, from which we planned to leave 101 and take Highway 1 up the coast. The mission there was nothing fantastic, though the "this building is unreinforced; unsafe during earthquake" placards everywhere added a bit of drama to the history. Then we headed to Morro Bay, our first stop along the coast, whose only apparent town feature consisted of a giant rock (Morro Rock) off its coast.
After Morro, civilization disappeared. Highway 1 is an adventure, a twisting bending road that hugs the mountains and the Pacific coastline, with sudden vista turnoffs that give you a breathtaking view of the ocean glimmering always to one side. With the convertible top down, I found myself taking pictures in all directions, while K kept both hands on the wheel. We stopped whenever we thought the view was particularly spectacular and wandered as close to the coastline as we dared; this wasn't very close, as the ocean tended to be a cliff-drop from where we stood. But the images were amazing: blue-green ocean, white foam, brown and green cliffs stretching to the horizon. The weather was bright and clear but colder than we expected; the open car let the wind whip down and around us, and I got pretty chilly towards evening.
When we got to Carmel-by-the-Sea, the man at the hotel desk told us that the current temperatures were indeed cooler than the average. He recommended us a dinner joint (Forge in the Forest, a place with hammered metal walls and an anvil in the center of the room), where we consumed sandwiches and garlic fries. We took a brief abortive stroll out to the beach, but could not find the stairway to the ocean in the dark, and had to content ourselves with looking at bonfires in the distance.
We found the beach access the next morning and wandered through sand and fog, admiring the scenery. Carmel-by-the-Sea is a beautiful but pricey place; people roam the expensive shops in designer clothing and the cozy houses by the coast have price tags of over $4 million apiece. We got coffee, glanced over the Carmel mission, and headed up to Monterey to meet K's parents, who were just concluding their own trip to California.
The fog was completely gone when we arrived at Monterey, just a few minutes north. We met up with K's parents and took an architectural/historical tour of the city, learning about native adobe, European brick and wood, and finally a fusion of the three. Monterey having been a whaling port, we also got to see the remnants of a whalebone sidewalk (those vertebrae are huge) and whale rib supports for door frames. For lunch, K and I shared fish and chips at a seaside restaurant on Cannery Row. We all piled into the convertible and took the 17-Mile-Drive along Pebble Beach, featuring huge cypress trees, beautiful golf courses, and amazing waves crashing themselves onto the rocks. (Also tame squirrels, crowds of shorebirds, and a beach full of very lazy seals.) Then it was off to San Jose, to find K's cousins.
San Jose is interesting to drive around; lots of tech companies have campuses there and we snapped photos of eBay, Maxtor, Cisco systems. K's cousin works at Adobe and managed to find time to eat dinner with us; they introduced us to a restaurant called Coriya Hot Pot City, a do-it-yourself buffet that combines the best of Chinese hot pot and Korean barbecue. A foil-covered disk for grilling surrounds the hot pot of boiling water; raw meat and uncooked vegetables are ranged along the side. We grilled and boiled and generally stuffed ourselves silly. I liked the sauce bar that allowed you to create your own dipping sauces; K was taken by the dessert bar that enabled him to assemble his own bubble tea drink. We drove there in the convertible, to the delight of the cousins.
Between all-you-can-eat sushi and all-you-can-eat hot pot, the vacation weight gain has now become a tangible force. Today we're going north of San Francisco, to admire the redwoods; hopefully I'll be able to walk some of this off.
...I'm really not going to like going back to work next week.
We had intended to head out early on Monday but cooking breakfast for my aunt turned into a hours-long affair; breakfast was wonderful and filling but we didn't end up leaving until noon. Therefore the only thing we saw in downtown Los Angeles was the Walt Disney Concert Hall, an architectural wonder that from the outside looks more like a collection of metal planes than a building, and from the inside is warm and wooden and glowing. We parked at a meter that gave us three minutes for every dime, which we considered more of a bargain than the $3 for 15 minute parking garages. Bit crazy, that.
In the afternoon we headed up to Valencia, where K's friend B was offering to put us up for the night. The famed LA traffic did not appear, making the trip a measly 45-minute sprint and leaving us stranded in Valencia until B got off work. We had ice cream and relaxed in the shade. B and his parents took us to all-you-can-eat sushi, where one sits at the bar, makes demands of the sushi chef, and generally stuffs oneself with expensive fish in an effort to make it "worth the price". I ate until satiation and beyond. Particularly enjoyed the specialty rolls, including a salmon skin roll that was served with a generous helping of bonito flakes. Afterwards, we relaxed in one of the pools in B's condo community until the guard kicked us out at closing.
We got up bright and early Tuesday for the drive up the coast. As we left Valencia, we passed groves and groves of orange trees. Roadside stands promised fresh oranges, avocados, and limes; unfortunately most of them weren't open yet. When we got to Ventura the mission wasn't open either, so we snapped some pictures of the outside and moved on.
We made it to Santa Barbara around 10am, and found fog clinging to the wharf and the coastline. We saw the mission there and wandered about for a bit, waiting for the fog to burn off. K got a restaurant recommendation from the man staffing the visitor's center: a Mexican place that looked like a dive, but was apparently well-known enough that people would drive there from miles around. It took us a bit of trouble to find it, but the food was fantastic - chorizos and barbecued meat inside tortillas, beans floating in broth, guacamole with generous chunks of avocado. We were in line behind a woman who'd heard about the place from all the way up in Seattle.
Our next inland stop was San Luis Obispo, from which we planned to leave 101 and take Highway 1 up the coast. The mission there was nothing fantastic, though the "this building is unreinforced; unsafe during earthquake" placards everywhere added a bit of drama to the history. Then we headed to Morro Bay, our first stop along the coast, whose only apparent town feature consisted of a giant rock (Morro Rock) off its coast.
After Morro, civilization disappeared. Highway 1 is an adventure, a twisting bending road that hugs the mountains and the Pacific coastline, with sudden vista turnoffs that give you a breathtaking view of the ocean glimmering always to one side. With the convertible top down, I found myself taking pictures in all directions, while K kept both hands on the wheel. We stopped whenever we thought the view was particularly spectacular and wandered as close to the coastline as we dared; this wasn't very close, as the ocean tended to be a cliff-drop from where we stood. But the images were amazing: blue-green ocean, white foam, brown and green cliffs stretching to the horizon. The weather was bright and clear but colder than we expected; the open car let the wind whip down and around us, and I got pretty chilly towards evening.
When we got to Carmel-by-the-Sea, the man at the hotel desk told us that the current temperatures were indeed cooler than the average. He recommended us a dinner joint (Forge in the Forest, a place with hammered metal walls and an anvil in the center of the room), where we consumed sandwiches and garlic fries. We took a brief abortive stroll out to the beach, but could not find the stairway to the ocean in the dark, and had to content ourselves with looking at bonfires in the distance.
We found the beach access the next morning and wandered through sand and fog, admiring the scenery. Carmel-by-the-Sea is a beautiful but pricey place; people roam the expensive shops in designer clothing and the cozy houses by the coast have price tags of over $4 million apiece. We got coffee, glanced over the Carmel mission, and headed up to Monterey to meet K's parents, who were just concluding their own trip to California.
The fog was completely gone when we arrived at Monterey, just a few minutes north. We met up with K's parents and took an architectural/historical tour of the city, learning about native adobe, European brick and wood, and finally a fusion of the three. Monterey having been a whaling port, we also got to see the remnants of a whalebone sidewalk (those vertebrae are huge) and whale rib supports for door frames. For lunch, K and I shared fish and chips at a seaside restaurant on Cannery Row. We all piled into the convertible and took the 17-Mile-Drive along Pebble Beach, featuring huge cypress trees, beautiful golf courses, and amazing waves crashing themselves onto the rocks. (Also tame squirrels, crowds of shorebirds, and a beach full of very lazy seals.) Then it was off to San Jose, to find K's cousins.
San Jose is interesting to drive around; lots of tech companies have campuses there and we snapped photos of eBay, Maxtor, Cisco systems. K's cousin works at Adobe and managed to find time to eat dinner with us; they introduced us to a restaurant called Coriya Hot Pot City, a do-it-yourself buffet that combines the best of Chinese hot pot and Korean barbecue. A foil-covered disk for grilling surrounds the hot pot of boiling water; raw meat and uncooked vegetables are ranged along the side. We grilled and boiled and generally stuffed ourselves silly. I liked the sauce bar that allowed you to create your own dipping sauces; K was taken by the dessert bar that enabled him to assemble his own bubble tea drink. We drove there in the convertible, to the delight of the cousins.
Between all-you-can-eat sushi and all-you-can-eat hot pot, the vacation weight gain has now become a tangible force. Today we're going north of San Francisco, to admire the redwoods; hopefully I'll be able to walk some of this off.
...I'm really not going to like going back to work next week.
