On the recommendation of friends and customers, we celebrated our anniversary on the central coast.  The original plan was to take a wine tour, but the hotel lost my phone number. As such, they couldn’t tell me that because of the zinfest, there was no room for me.  We made the best of it anyway, and did a “road trip” up PCH.  First stop was breakfast in Santa Monica at a highly reputable breakfast spot, where there was no where to park and barely an entrance due to construction.  For lunch we visited Pea Soup Anderson’s, and took the back country through a bunch of wineries back to the coast.  Our hotel was right on the “strip” of Morro bay;  The Embarcadero Inn.   That night we had reservations at Hoppe’s in Cayucos

The food was excellent, the scenery was sunny and bright, and we had a hard time getting up in the morning. It was very cloudy, but we had booked a tour to see Hearst Castle.

Lots of people seem to be fascinated with this place, but to me it looks like another old hotel like the mission inn.  It would be really cool to live there, but it looks like it cost a fortune just to keep the grass growing.  Probably why the family gave it to the state.  The flicker page has pictures of what we saw, as well as other pictures of the trip.  I’m sure sometime this season Sarah will post something too.

We did get an exclusive on one thing, If you search images of Hearst castle, most of what they show are the pools.  We got to see the indoor pool drained, and all the tile exposed. some of the tiles are real gold.

The castle was 30 minutes from the hotel. Before we left, i wanted to try a cinnamon roll at Crill’s, because the looked so goon in the add.  i got charged 4 bucks for a cold soggy blob with nuts on it.  not happy.  On the way back we stopped at a few small towns and visited wine tasting rooms and a recommended restaurant. We spent too much money on wine, but it was good stuff.

That night, the hotel let us down again when we discovered the spa was being renovated and was closed.  We ended up walking around the shopping strip along the pier in front of our hotel, and fell asleep eating goodies we had accumulated.

In the morning we ate at Dorn’s, and hit the road.  halfway back, we took a walk at the camarillo outlets to get things circulating.  The place still reminds me of Uncle Bob. When we got home around 2, we watched TV and napped the rest of the day.

We want to go back, but i would need a better reason, like a train trip, or going with a group or another couple.  if anyone is up to it, leme know.  next year, I think we will go back to Idylwild.

Posted on March 26th, 2009 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized