I don’t usually feel strongly enough about something like this to post, but I recently ordered a photobook of this holiday from blurb.com to be delivered to the UK on a standard service schedule. I wasn’t in a rush for my book… that said, I did find one month a little excessive turnaround time for a small photobook.

Quality is crap

The second disappointment was for me, much more significant. The quality of the book was terrible! All photos were taken in RAW format on Canon and Olympus SLRs. The photos were exported as JPEGs in sRGB colour space as specified by blurb.com. Why are the colours so murky and lacking in vibrance? Honestly, my Canon IP4300 inkjet produces quality on a whole different level above this service. I could have stuck together a few pages myself and produced a better product… it is SO DISAPPOINTING!

Will I use again

Oh no, no no no! Come on, bad quality print, 1 month delivery time…

I sincerely hope that the service North Americans get from blurb.com is better than my European experience but it is TOTALLY SHIT as far as I am concerned.

Yes, we went to Las Vegas… Enough said

Paris

Utterly tasteful don’t you think, a charming recreation of Gustav’s masterpiece of engineering and you don’t have to travel to France to see it, you can remain within the safe haven of America. 

Truly wonderful, meaning that one no longer needs to endure The French to enjoy The Eiffel Tower.

This photograph is dedicated to Pauline Grand d’Esnon

Why not enjoy authentic French cuisine from the top floor restaurant.

www.eiffeltowerrestaurant.com

As the holiday draws near its unfortunate conclusion, it seemed only right that we put our feet up in luxury for a few days. After all, it’s been hard work all of this Pacific adventuring! I cannot think of a better place to rest the weary legs and revitalise the overloaded mind with great food, culture and architecture than; Santa Barbara.

Hotels

Pool side at Hotel Oceana

We stayed in Hotel Oceana which is an unusual beachside place formed from the conversion of 4 old motels into a boutique style colourful hotel with a decent location. I say beachside, it’s actually across the road but there are no walk-onto-the-beach hotels in SB as far as I can see so no complaints there. The pool was lovely and we had a nice large superior room.

On the roof at sundown

Night Life

SB seems to be a party town for the resident UCSB students and lively Californians who jet here for the weekend party scene. It’s as you may expect an upscale strip along State St offering excellent restaurants of every sort and a selection of bars and nightclubs for later.

Architecture

Rooftops in Santa Barbara looking over to Hills

The Spanish Colonial architecture in SB is impressive. To say it had been lovingly preserved would be incorrect since much of it was decimated by the 1920s major earthquake. Lovingly restored would therefore more aptly describe it.

A fine place to watch a movie is The Arlington Theatre, host to much of the Santa Barbara Film Festival. It’s the most spectacular cinema I’ve ever seen, with a huge seating area and screen surrounded by artificial (but pretty realistic) Mock Spanish Villas and a starry-sky roof to give the feeling of sitting in an open air courtyard. The effect is stunning.

We watched Burn After Reading, a new Cohen Brothers release providing an almost Shakespearian farcical diversion from their usual stuff.

Finally, I spent an afternoon looking around the Law Courts and The Museum of Art which was showing a Hollywood Photography exhibition. It’s a small but good art museum.

Food

Opal Restaurant  - Great Quality innovative modern Italian food with seafood accents. Good cocktails.

Sunset at the Marina

Photo credits: wolffman17 on flickr

This charming inland student town is home to Cal Poly University, which sounds like a paediatric medicine. It is a hugely fun town of 20,000 students, a charming set of avenues with pleasant shops, bars and cafes to provide for the dominant young demographic.

SLO, Slick timing

We carefully timed our visit to land on a friday night the weekend before Cal Poly return for their new semester thinking that there might just be some action. And, there was plenty. Bars were loud and full of students returning, ready to get back into college life and full of summer vacation stories. We spoke to quite a few and whilst they were friendly, we rapidly understood the importance of the Poly part of the university’s title.

Come up for air

That is the town’s motto for some reason, couldn’t find why but I have a nice T-shirt with that printed on it from Moondoggies surf store.

We spent Saturday getting a haircut followed by eating great pizza in Woodstock pizzeria, our hairdresser had recommended Firestone grill but it was heaving full.

We followed with a bit of shopping, I found a nice camera store Jim’s Campus Camera which was good on small accessories such as a spirit level so I can get my horizons straight for a change.

Bubble Gum Alley

Wikipedia description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubblegum_Alley

The town’s one main tourist attraction is hilarious and truly gives an idea of the vibe of this fun little town. It’s a small alleyway just off Higuera St in which the walls are plastered with bubble gum. Unique and disgusting.

SLO also has the best looking girls yet so far in California

Hearst Castle

Hearst Castle aerial view by bestbuddieschallenge on flickr

Finally, we got our act together and wiped away the SLO vibe to head to Hearst Castle, a disneyland of architecture built by th eccentric William Randolph Hearst following an enlightening trip to Europe in 1919. Apparently inspired by pan-European architecture, he tried to incorporate the best of it all into this magical theme park on a hill in San Simeon.

It’s utterly tasteless and excessive, but I do love it.

We watched the National Geographic documentary in the resident giant cinema on the building of it.

I’m not sure if W.R. Hearst visited the same Europe that I live in… perhaps there is a Europe, Texas or something that confused him?

Photography

As you will appreciate, the photos on this posting are not by me. I’m getting a little fatigued with photography at the moment as we have visited so many places this week and trying to process them on the Asus Eeepc is just tedious.

After Santa Cruz, the next leg of this epic road-trip became quite a busy schedule in an attempt to soak up all of scenic Highway 1 over the space of 5-days. It’s something you could easily spend a whole holiday doing if you needed to be thorough.

Carmel by the sea, The Riviera

Great architecture in Carmel

Carmel is a fairytale beach town with a beautiful wide sandy bay beach and a shoreline dotted with incredible houses. The architecture here surpasses Hollywood and Beverly Hills many times. There is everything, from the pseudo Mexican (drug dealer) ranch houses to the super modern glass angular houses and chocolate box mock-Swiss chalets – and naturally they are all right next to each other as this is who gives a… California. The main street is lined with designer boutiques (possibly the only village with a Bottega Veneta in the world?) and the whole place has a real St Tropez feel to it, but is not nearly as busy and developed.

Doggie hour

We dropped by at “dog walking time” around 6pm. This is a highly sociable passtime in California where chic ladies chihuahuas rub noses (to ass usually) with Arnie’s pedigree green eyed silver pitbull. It’s designer doggie land – don’t forget the poop scoop though ($84 fine), no – actually do forget it as Carmel City provides them for free at frequent intervals along the dog track. Fun place.

Pebble Beach and The 17-Mile Drive

Pebble Beach Resort club house

17 Mile Drive is a private road (official site) running from Carmel to Pacific Grove near Monterrey. It costs $9.25 to enter the road subject to permission at the gate. It contains 3 world class golf courses such as the sublime Pebble Beach Resort (Green fee $425).

First stop Pebble Beach

Pebble Beach links

Beautiful, super mega pimp country club and golf courses by the ocean. In Great Britain one would not be allowed in such a club without hefty membership charges (hello Hurlingham) – but this is the land of opportunity and anyone who can afford this and looks the part can come in, so we did.

Pebble Beach Golf club house

Gilly was quite lustful about the golf course and I even wanted to play on it, not being a golfer and all. I did establish that they also had some fine tennis courts, ouch! Dragged away kicking and screaming.

Before we got too settled / lustful we hopped back in the shed and drove around to a nice sunset point and on to The Lone Cypress, a tree on a rock which happens to be pretty and also the logo of Pebble Beach Club – hence its fame.

The Lone Cypress, much photographed - here's my effort

Finally as the last embers of the sunset dipped over the horizon, we reached Pebble Beach itself, so-called as people stack the pebbles into little satanic mounds along the beach. It looks quite charming in the sunset light but I have no idea why they bother, I had a lot of fun knocking them down.

Pebble stacks along the 17-Mile Drive

The houses in this area are all highly secluded and private so I have no idea what they look like but I’m sure they’re quite ridiculous.

And finally, Monterrey

I didn’t take a single picture in this town, it is an unremarkable geriatric town of boredom and John Steinbeck fame of course. It has the famous Cannery Row, wow – a load of old sardine tinning factories turned into a tourist trap. One feature here worthy of brief mention are the venetian bridges that link the factories across the road. They look quite scenic when adorned with neon at night.

The Monterey Jazz festival was also on but I really couldn’t tell. It didn’t seem to liven the place up that much.

Yawn, take a look at the official website if you care.

Laguna Seca is a world famous racetrack for bike and car motorsport which I didn’t even realise was in California until Gilly the Lonely Planet geek asked if I had ever heard of it, to which I replied: heard of it? I’ve driven it a hunred times (on Gran Turismo that is)

Anyway, I would like to dedicate this short postng to my good friend James Eaglesham, another armchair conoisseur of this track. And, here sir is our favourite steep corner, the corkscrew.

There were no races on the day we were there and unsurprisingly they wouldn’t let us take the Chrysler Sebring automatic convertible rental on the track.

Sadly no racers on the corkscrew that day

Santa Cruz is situated on central California’s Pacific surf paradise coastline south of San Francisco on the way to the Bay of Monterey. It’s something of a legend in name to any of you who have ever graced a surfboard, with world famous surf spots such as Steamer Lane.

Suggested listening whilst reading: Dick & The Deltones – Miserlou

Eccentric

Santa Cruz is right in the heart of laid back, eccentric ultra-liberal California and it feels like the place has been frozen in a 1950’s timewarp. The smell of marijuana perfumes the main strip Pacific Avenue, whilst police officers merrily stroll along moving along the towns massive homeless population.

In fact, I must dwell on this point as it they really caught my eye – Just to re-iterate. There are so so many homeless people in Santa Cruz, I could not believe it. However, they seem happy and highly sociable amongst each other. Many of them are in their 60s and I can’t help but feel from their attire and schizoaffective charms that they must be burnt out children of the California 60s? Not particularly interested in scrounging money, perpetually friendly and helpful.

My favourite quote of the day comes from one homeless man chatting to another who had scored himself a capuccino in one of the numerous coffee shops:

“I love your pirate hat sir, where did you get that from? I simply have to get me one of those”

And, in case you’re wondering. Yes, the other homeless man was sitting enjoying his capuccino in full Long John Silver attire.

Surf

Surfing at Steamer Lane, Santa Cruz

We saw some great surfers down at Steamer Lane. There is also a surf museum there, sadly not open on Tuesdays and Wednesdays – typical lazy Santa Cruz

Night

By night the street is lively with homeless people twanging out surf-dude rock on worse-for-wear guitars and puffing on their magic plants, perfectly juxtaposed next to UC students who study in this excellent college town. We met and chatted to a few in 99-bottles bar who re-assured us it’s a great place to live. I believe it!

99-bottles is worthy of a mention, it has 99 different ales. We went with Jordan and Amie our friends from The Cook islands who are following us around California. I made them sample Montana’s finest Moose Drool ale and some Fat Tire from Colorado – both old favourites of mine from back up in Big Sky.

Hangover shopping

Those ales gave us a murderous hangover so we relaxed in SC with some bagels in the main st and then looked around a few surf stores (great) and bought some 60s surf tunes for the car in an old record store.

Best coffee yet of the holiday had in The Bad Ass Coffee Company

Sonoma is the sleepy undersold little brother to the world famous Napa valley, and that appealed to me. We only had a day to see wine country (at least near SF) and so Sonoma it was.

This advice came in part from a little lady I met in SF the night before, and it was sound advice. She also told me the best Pinot around came from Russian River which was similarly great advice.

SF to Sonoma

Sonoma City Hall

An effortless 1-hour drive over the Golden Gate (I prefer the Bay Bridge) found us in swish Marin County headed for wine country. You reach a cross-roads which almost begs the question of you: are you a Napa type or a Sonoma type?

Napa is slick, commercial and marketed, whilst Sonoma is sleepy horizontal hill billy quaint and I like that. There are many more family wineries and often of equal quality to the Napa neighbour.

Sonoma City main square

Sonoma City is a gorgeous quaint colonial style town, manicured to perfection and with little for the tourist alone. We had a delicious lunch washed down with a glass of local Pinot, my handmade gnocchi were a thing of culinary beauty.

A short drive later and we hit our first winery B.R. Cohn but it was a little lacklustre and too busy, being the closest to the town itself. So, we got back in the shed and headed for Glen Ellen to the local behemoth The Benziger Family Estate. Glen Ellen is super quaint and reminds me very much of Braemar in the Scottish Highlands for some reason. Think perfectly painted yellow wooden barns with US flags draped on their western fonted signs and little picket fences.

The Benziger winery was excellent in that it allowed oservation of all steps of the wine making process as well as the usual tours and tastings. I didn’t mess around, I knew what I came to California wine country for – straight into the Pinot’s. Like fireworks – in the mouth, punchy rude, expensive and short lived but wondrous.

Some lucky ones may find a couple of bottles coming their way if we can sneak them home.

Wine country could be a holiday in its own right, the standard of everything here is very high and apparently America’s finest restaurant is to be found in this area, French Laundry

I had very high hopes for Fog City, it had been elected to quite some pedestal by my dad and Gilly. Stories of how cosmopolitan, yet European and highly cultural it was enticed me – suffice to say, I was pretty excited!

During our stay in Yosemite, I would listen to KFOG (do listen online, it’s really good) radio a wonderful station playing classic million dollar soft rock such as The Police, U2 and Bonnie Tyler next to Goldfrapp and Ladytron. Presenters had seductive, soft and educated voices, I could not wait for this city.

The Ugly

Steep 30-degree inclines

A number of let downs initially ruined this unfortunately. I had tooth problems and had to see a dentist for root canal surgery. Thank goodness this fell in America, where the standard of dentistry is sublime. Dr Quach really sorted me out. Brilliant guy who spent time making me comfortable and explaining his every precise manoeuvre. I am considering flying back for future dental work as prices are also much better here. Anyway, that’s an aside…

The Bad

Another striking disappointment was Fisherman’s Wharf – tourist shithole, don’t bother wasting your time and energy, this is not San Francisco. Pier 39 is simply criminal, can we get Al Qaeda in to sort that one out please? Oh, and did I mention – people in SF are a little cold and unfriendly, shopkeepers are a little too pushy for the sale. Some ageing queer in Macy’s with a face and god knows what else pumped full of Botox tried so hard to sell Gilly a bad beige sweater.

The Good

Homes on Telegraph Hill

OK, San Francisco is wonderful really. It has a Euro-feel. It’s laid back, the quality of life is excellent and it’s architecturally magnificent. I really wish they could just forget about tourism and get on with their great city, allowing us tourists to just enjoy.

Financial District

Architecturally I really rate the town planning of the business district. They have thought carefully about how the light off the bay falls onto the buildings and illuminates those steep streets, the effect is magical in the late afternoon.

Cable car rides up those 30 degree inclines are charming, Telegraph hill is so boho-chic it hurts, the art-deco buildings and there are some really lovely green areas. Not a bad place, but for me – not the full package.

Cow Hollow

We stayed on Lombard St in Cow Hollow. Seemingly quite an upmarket and chic area. Once I had recovered from my visit to the Chinese dentist (Dr Phil Ling as Gilly called him) we went for a great Thai meal in Asha on Union St followed by a surprise Monday night out til 3am in Matrix on Fillmore St.

I realise that being in pain needing to see the dentist followed by touring the city off my tree on Vicodin (Thanks Dr Ling) is not the best way to appreciate the city, so maybe I will have to visit again somtime.

The drive from LA up to Yosemite is quite special. We opted to take the Tioga pass route on Uncle Tom’s advice – we met him in Fiji on a beach at Nanuya Lai Lai, he’s a California resident who gave us some top advice.

A note on the photos… Yosemite is just too extensive and these are a few of 2 GB of pictures I took. Some of the shots are panoramas which I will not be able to finish until back home so I hope not to disappoint here…

Check out my flickr photostream for Yosemite National Park

Lone Pine, pretty little town under Mt Whitney

Well, I was not disappointed with Uncle Tom’s route, we took a stop in Lone Pine and had a delicious steak sandwich in Totem Pole cafe. A quick wander around the town’s main street revealed a few friendly sporting shop owners wanting a chat and a quick view of Mount Whitney before getting back on the road.

Mammoth is a hit

We continued up the valley to Mammoth, the ski resort and stopped by for a quick look around the Mammoth Ski Museum. Very nice, it focuses much more on the history of the resort and the artwork which surrounds skiing rather than a load of old ski kit which these museums usually tend towards. Refreshing and I recommend a visit to any ski buff in the area. I also really want to come and ski Mammoth now I’ve seen the resort, it’s really charming.

Tioga Pass

Olmstead Point, sunset

Next, we started our sharp ascent up Tioga pass, the most dramatic and scenic route up to Yosemite passing such treasures as Lake Mono along the way. We timed the ascent perfectly to be at Olmstead point for sunset – rated as the best view in Yosemite. It was easy to spot many of Ansel Adams’ favourite spots along the way and, naturally we tried feebly to replicate his masterpieces.

Ansel Adams would be proud

Camp Curry
We stayed at Camp Curry, the long trusted budget option. It was even opened as just that according to the Yosemite museum. Our accommodation was basic, in a canvas base camp tent but charming – especially the “Bear Safe” locker for storage of food items. A hefty fine beckoned those who shunned the safety of the bear-safe locker.

Yosemite Days

Vernal Falls and rainbow

We spent our Yosemite days touring the scenic forest passes of the narrow valley and climbing to breathtaking points such as Glacier Point to catch the good sunsets. I’ve pretty much become a sunset junkie / connoisseur on this holiday and I do hope that the austistic detail of these priceless daily 30-minutes of feeling at one with natures warm golden gamut isn’t boring you all.

Alternative Yosemite

On our second day I was getting a little tired of one

Hmmm, maybe I overcooked the polariser here?

scenic point of interest after another and persuaded Gilly that often US national parks have really good museums and galleries (Noted during time at Yellowstone). Yosemite is no exception. The Ansel Adams gallery, whilst heavy on sales has some spectacular works and good equipment. I picked up a polarising filter, it comes in so handy for eliminating reflections during those aforementioned sunset moments.

Yosemite is wonderful, make sure you visit if you’re ever nearby… though I would not recommend travelling just to see it. Yellowstone is bigger and less commercialised, but I guess that’s California vs Montana for you.