Day Three.
Excellent sleep in the Lodge in Solvang and we stopped at a bakery in town for breakfast. Well we had breakfast in the hotel but stopped for Danish pastries for the journey and saw Choux Buns!! These are a Robert and Carol favourite from back in the UK and we had never seen proper ones here in the US. There are plenty of cream puffs but the cream is not proper cream. So we had a couple of those for our Hobbit 2nd breakfast…They were very good. Solvang bakery had a great selection of proper European baked goods. Recommended!
We did grab the pastries for the road as well but ended up eating them the next day!
Next stop was for a Winery/Vineyard. It was Sunday morning though so we struggled. We had been recommended Los Olivos (Thanks Meg!) as a place to go so we popped along but we were too early to get in anywhere and we had a long road ahead of us. Beautiful area though and worth the visit.
Then we were properly onto the Pacific Coast highway. What a drive! The views were absolutely AMAZING. Like driving the Glens of Scotland only higher and with sheer cliffs on one side!
We stopped off to see some Elephant Seals, Short pit stop at Hearst Castle, Lunch at Ragged Point, decent food but service could have been better, (45 mins wait on a quiet day was not great) and then headed further on to Santa Cruz.
The Bixby Bridge is worth the drive alone. Amazing bridge and in an absolutely breathtaking setting.
Santa Cruz
Stopped here purely because as a young man I was a massive Lost Boys fan and this is where they filmed the movie. It was called Santa Carla in the movie and weirdly other than one poster on the boardwalk there was no other mention of the film. I supposed being dubbed the ‘Murder Capital of the World’ rubbed them wrong! It was strange as we were able to walk around some of the locations and even heard other people talking about it but the folk in the shops hadn’t really heard about the movie (although they were teenagers…).
Anyway the Boardwalk is still there, the Merry go round, the sky glider, the bridge where they dangle off and the shops where the parents chat and meet up are all there. It was amazing. I was delighted. We stayed in a nice little hotel called Casablanca on the beach which had a cool artisan vibe about it and we had a nice room overlooking the ocean. The hotel has a Thai restaurant attached and we ate there. Decent food. Really enjoyed the walk around and we even had a go on the Sky Glider which was a little daunting for Carol!
McAllen Family Adventures 