K and David's California Adventure! May 2015 : Day 3 - Santa Monica to Morro Bay

Guest · 3 Aug 15, 12:05 PM

*My boyfriend Ranny wrote today just so you know I've not gone crazy and referring to myself in the 3rd person*

So being from the south coast of England, Earthquakes are not something we’ve ever experienced or really even thought would happen, but around 4am on the second night we were in LA, K woke up in the night because a bottle of water was rocking back and forth on the fridge. A few months before hand we had been staying in an AirBnb in Brooklyn and had had a not very nice experience with some mice in our room that woke us up in the middle of the night. So naturally, K thought there were more mice here in LA.

Having checked around we saw there were no mice and so we went back to sleep, only to be woken up minutes later by the woman staying the room next to ours slamming her front door and shaking our entire room! Which was annoying to say the least, but we managed to go back to sleep pretty easily and there were no more disturbances for the rest of the night.

When we woke in the morning and checked our phones and the news feeds, it turned out that the woman in the next room slamming her door was in fact a 3.8 magnitude Earthquake! Our first ever seismic event and we thought it was a woman next door being rude!

So day 3 of our vacation was the beginning of the ‘travel’ portion of the trip. We were leaving LA and driving north up Route 1 to get to San Francisco over the next 3 days.

The first stop was a Seven 11 to stock up on snacks and drinks for the car and then we headed just 20 minutes up the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu.

The day started out a bit grey and not very warm, and being a Sunday morning there weren’t that many people about, so we were a little bummed out that the day wouldn’t be great but then it was only 8:45 am at this point.

We parked up at the bottom of Malibu Pier having found a space between the hundreds of surfers, and made our way to Malibu Farm which is right at the end of the pier. It didn’t open until 9am and so we were the first in the queue which was perfect as it meant we got first pick of the seating and the view didn’t disappoint…

The seating area outside was on the 2nd level of the restaurant and looked straight out towards the sea. We were able to get seats at this little breakfast bar type thing so you couldn’t see the pier below you, you just had LA to your left, Surfers to your right and DOLPHINS straight in front of you! It was the best. Having never seen Dolphins in the wild this was a pretty good introduction to them.

Malibu Farm wasn’t the cheapest of restaurants but in my opinion it’s well worth a little extra $$. We both had a Fried Egg sandwich with little roasted Potatoes which was pretty awesome and OJ in some trendy jam jars that had Malibu Farm branding on them, so naturally we bought one to take home!

Next up on out travels was Santa Barbara. As a ‘Top Tip’ for travelling around an unknown country, defiantly use a Sat Nav and at no point must you EVER LISTEN TO KIRSTINE SQUIRE! Looking at a map of Route 1 (and 101) you’ll see that it is a pretty straight line and so you might agree with Miss Squire that if you keep heading forward you can’t go wrong, so ‘Turn the Sat Nav off. Live a little. Be adventurous.’… drive for half an hour in the wrong direction because the roads are more confusing than you thought and maybe the computer knows more than we do…

After our little detour, we made our way into Santa Barbara and found ourselves in the town center. This was pretty cute but didn’t seem to be much going on as it was a Sunday so we headed to the beach and the pier.

We went into a couple of stores on the pier and watched a Barbershop Quartet for a while (who were awesome), but it was kinda windy so we headed back to the car and got back on the road. Next stop Solvang!

We first heard of Solvang from a You Tuber we watch called ‘Live Fast Die Poor’. It’s super weird and awesome. Justin explains it’s history pretty well in this video but in a nutshell there were a bunch of Danish settlers who built their homes here some time ago and being Danish their buildings were pretty ‘Danish-y’. After a while they realized this was bringing a lot of tourism to the town and so they decided to go full hog and start putting up Windmills and Hans Cristian Anderson Museums. Having watched this videos we noticed that Solvang was about 5 minutes from our route so it would make the perfect lunch spot.

We walking around the town which looks like a cross between the beginning of Pinocchio and Fantasyland, which I guess is fundamentally the same thing, but it’s very easy to forget you’re in California. We had a look in bunch of stores and museums, and then had some eats at ‘The Solvang Brewing Company’ as we can never resist sampling the local brews. We both had Deep Fried Zucchini and some Pretzels which was about as healthy as it sounds.

After an Ice Cream, a Frappe and a walk around we got back on the road towards where we were staying that night; Morro Bay.

Morro Bay was lovely. There’s not really a better way to describe it. It’s a quaint little harbor town with a row of shops, bars, fishing boats and motels.

After we checked into The Pleasant Inn Motel, we walked the 100 yards down into town to have a look around. The first thing we saw was a Tiki shop that had a boat outside that had hourly Tiki cruises. Fundamentally this was a little ferry boat that went out into the Harbour with a dude driving that told you a little about the town of Morro, with Seals and Otters swimming around. All of this whilst they served very strong cocktails from the on board bar. Needless to say, it was awesome and only $10! Interesting Facts about Morro Bay: They trained soldiers for the Invasion of Normandy there. The big rock is a Falcon reserve and Native American ground. If you are caught on it you will get lumped with a $10,000 fine! Unless you’re Native American in which case you can climb it every Solstice to visit the Indian Burial Ground at the top.

We managed to time it pretty well that the sun set behind the rock whilst we were on the cruise so it made from some pretty awesome photos.

Once we were back on dry land, after a quick stop at the Motel, we went in search of food. Unfortunately this did not go as well as hoped. Being a Sunday a lot of places were closed and being a fishing town, most places were fish only restaurants. As persevering Vegetarians we soldiered on and found an Italian place that promised ‘Steak, Seafood, Pizza, Pasta’, so we thought “Pizza will do”.

However, not before seeing a Delorean in the car park. Never seen one of those out in the wild.

The restaurant was up on the hill, away from the rest of the town, which really should have been our first red flag. I won’t go into too much detail but the pizza base wasn’t cooked so it was like eating dough with cheese on top and it was all round pretty depressing. Just trust me, if you go to Morro Bay, eat Fish or bring a sandwich! After this disappointing meal there didn't seem much to do but head back to the motel. We also remembered it was a Sunday evening in the USA so that meant Game Of Thrones would be on! We were excited to watch this as it aired for once but we were too sleepy...

true-lifeadventures

MissVincent · 5 Aug 15, 09:52 PM

such a shame about your rubbish pizza. I love pizza so I would have been gutted

Thanks for sharing

smedley · 9 Aug 15, 03:12 AM

Badly cooked pizza is definitely not a good thing :/

**anji** · 9 Aug 15, 03:14 PM

Shame about the pizza but a fab day. Love the Tikki Cruise

Guest · 12 Aug 15, 04:13 PM

Originally Posted by MissVincent

such a shame about your rubbish pizza. I love pizza so I would have been gutted

Thanks for sharing

I also love pizza haha so it was very disappointing! When we get to Yosemite tho we end up eating fantastic pizza 4 nights in a row...

(because there was no other veggie food) It was great!

Thanks for reading! x

Guest · 12 Aug 15, 04:14 PM

Originally Posted by smedley

Badly cooked pizza is definitely not a good thing :/

No it wasn't great... didn't make me feel too good in the night either but I won't go into detail!

Thanks for reading!

Guest · 12 Aug 15, 04:15 PM

Originally Posted by anji

Shame about the pizza but a fab day. Love the Tikki Cruise

The Tikki cruise was incredible! A really fun little surprise. We should of just gone on that again instead of having dinner and filled up on cocktails!

Thanks for reading!

3 Aug 15, 12:05 PM	#1
	3 Aug 15, 12:05 PM Guest Guest
Guest Guest	K and David's California Adventure! May 2015 : Day 3 - Santa Monica to Morro Bay My boyfriend Ranny wrote today just so you know I've not gone crazy and referring to myself in the 3rd person So being from the south coast of England, Earthquakes are not something we’ve ever experienced or really even thought would happen, but around 4am on the second night we were in LA, K woke up in the night because a bottle of water was rocking back and forth on the fridge. A few months before hand we had been staying in an AirBnb in Brooklyn and had had a not very nice experience with some mice in our room that woke us up in the middle of the night. So naturally, K thought there were more mice here in LA. Having checked around we saw there were no mice and so we went back to sleep, only to be woken up minutes later by the woman staying the room next to ours slamming her front door and shaking our entire room! Which was annoying to say the least, but we managed to go back to sleep pretty easily and there were no more disturbances for the rest of the night. When we woke in the morning and checked our phones and the news feeds, it turned out that the woman in the next room slamming her door was in fact a 3.8 magnitude Earthquake! Our first ever seismic event and we thought it was a woman next door being rude! So day 3 of our vacation was the beginning of the ‘travel’ portion of the trip. We were leaving LA and driving north up Route 1 to get to San Francisco over the next 3 days. The first stop was a Seven 11 to stock up on snacks and drinks for the car and then we headed just 20 minutes up the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu. The day started out a bit grey and not very warm, and being a Sunday morning there weren’t that many people about, so we were a little bummed out that the day wouldn’t be great but then it was only 8:45 am at this point. We parked up at the bottom of Malibu Pier having found a space between the hundreds of surfers, and made our way to Malibu Farm which is right at the end of the pier. It didn’t open until 9am and so we were the first in the queue which was perfect as it meant we got first pick of the seating and the view didn’t disappoint… The seating area outside was on the 2nd level of the restaurant and looked straight out towards the sea. We were able to get seats at this little breakfast bar type thing so you couldn’t see the pier below you, you just had LA to your left, Surfers to your right and DOLPHINS straight in front of you! It was the best. Having never seen Dolphins in the wild this was a pretty good introduction to them. Malibu Farm wasn’t the cheapest of restaurants but in my opinion it’s well worth a little extra $$. We both had a Fried Egg sandwich with little roasted Potatoes which was pretty awesome and OJ in some trendy jam jars that had Malibu Farm branding on them, so naturally we bought one to take home! Next up on out travels was Santa Barbara. As a ‘Top Tip’ for travelling around an unknown country, defiantly use a Sat Nav and at no point must you EVER LISTEN TO KIRSTINE SQUIRE! Looking at a map of Route 1 (and 101) you’ll see that it is a pretty straight line and so you might agree with Miss Squire that if you keep heading forward you can’t go wrong, so ‘Turn the Sat Nav off. Live a little. Be adventurous.’… drive for half an hour in the wrong direction because the roads are more confusing than you thought and maybe the computer knows more than we do… After our little detour, we made our way into Santa Barbara and found ourselves in the town center. This was pretty cute but didn’t seem to be much going on as it was a Sunday so we headed to the beach and the pier. We went into a couple of stores on the pier and watched a Barbershop Quartet for a while (who were awesome), but it was kinda windy so we headed back to the car and got back on the road. Next stop Solvang! We first heard of Solvang from a You Tuber we watch called ‘Live Fast Die Poor’. It’s super weird and awesome. Justin explains it’s history pretty well in this video but in a nutshell there were a bunch of Danish settlers who built their homes here some time ago and being Danish their buildings were pretty ‘Danish-y’. After a while they realized this was bringing a lot of tourism to the town and so they decided to go full hog and start putting up Windmills and Hans Cristian Anderson Museums. Having watched this videos we noticed that Solvang was about 5 minutes from our route so it would make the perfect lunch spot. We walking around the town which looks like a cross between the beginning of Pinocchio and Fantasyland, which I guess is fundamentally the same thing, but it’s very easy to forget you’re in California. We had a look in bunch of stores and museums, and then had some eats at ‘The Solvang Brewing Company’ as we can never resist sampling the local brews. We both had Deep Fried Zucchini and some Pretzels which was about as healthy as it sounds. After an Ice Cream, a Frappe and a walk around we got back on the road towards where we were staying that night; Morro Bay. Morro Bay was lovely. There’s not really a better way to describe it. It’s a quaint little harbor town with a row of shops, bars, fishing boats and motels. After we checked into The Pleasant Inn Motel, we walked the 100 yards down into town to have a look around. The first thing we saw was a Tiki shop that had a boat outside that had hourly Tiki cruises. Fundamentally this was a little ferry boat that went out into the Harbour with a dude driving that told you a little about the town of Morro, with Seals and Otters swimming around. All of this whilst they served very strong cocktails from the on board bar. Needless to say, it was awesome and only $10! Interesting Facts about Morro Bay: They trained soldiers for the Invasion of Normandy there. The big rock is a Falcon reserve and Native American ground. If you are caught on it you will get lumped with a $10,000 fine! Unless you’re Native American in which case you can climb it every Solstice to visit the Indian Burial Ground at the top. We managed to time it pretty well that the sun set behind the rock whilst we were on the cruise so it made from some pretty awesome photos. Once we were back on dry land, after a quick stop at the Motel, we went in search of food. Unfortunately this did not go as well as hoped. Being a Sunday a lot of places were closed and being a fishing town, most places were fish only restaurants. As persevering Vegetarians we soldiered on and found an Italian place that promised ‘Steak, Seafood, Pizza, Pasta’, so we thought “Pizza will do”. However, not before seeing a Delorean in the car park. Never seen one of those out in the wild. The restaurant was up on the hill, away from the rest of the town, which really should have been our first red flag. I won’t go into too much detail but the pizza base wasn’t cooked so it was like eating dough with cheese on top and it was all round pretty depressing. Just trust me, if you go to Morro Bay, eat Fish or bring a sandwich! After this disappointing meal there didn't seem much to do but head back to the motel. We also remembered it was a Sunday evening in the USA so that meant Game Of Thrones would be on! We were excited to watch this as it aired for once but we were too sleepy... true-lifeadventures Edited at 09:20 PM.