The day started with rain flooding the parking lot of our hotel in Carmel. In fact, our brakes got wet going through a particularly deep pool causing them to complain rather like a wounded elephant each time the brake pedal was depressed. I was a bit depressed myself until we got going and started the journey over Big Sur toward San Simeon, the first stop on today’s itinerary.
But the sun came out as we wended our way up and over the mountains and the sight of the surf crashing against the rocks was enough to cheer even the glummest traveler. To say that Big Sur is spectacular seems to do it an injustice. There are few words than can describe it adequately and those, I suspect would have to come from a writer much more gifted than I.
We drove the winding road on the side of cliffs and through woods where the fog rose up from amid deciduous trees gnarled by the elements and conifers that stood tall in spite of the wind’s
attempt to bend them. The fog itself lent eeriness and an element of mystery to the surrounding environment, drifting in and out, playing with our minds and leading us to wonder if perhaps the forest was on fire.
The seabirds were playing too, balancing themselves on the wind like emancipated kites, watching carefully for opportunities to grab lunch from the ground below.
It was lunchtime for us too, and windy, and so I sat in the car with the door open while I ate my sandwich and sipped on a cup of tea that I had made in the hotel room that morning. I bought the sandwich at a Seven Eleven near our hotel, but perhaps it was the sea air that made it taste better than anything I might have ordered in a fancy restaurant. And the tea, made in the hotel room coffee maker, was like nectar from the gods.
After lunch, we made our way to San Simeon where we stopped to take a tour of Hearst Castle. Hearst Castle is an architectural phenomena. It is located on the top of a hill among approximately three thousand acres of rolling hills looking right out to the ocean. The “castle” was actually referred to by William Randolph Hearst as the “little ranch” because it was the smallest of his properties. It was designed by architect Julia Morgan who worked with Hearst over a period of many years making his oft wild dreams into a reality. Hearst Castle has a glamorous story and one that gives it a certain mystique. It captures the imagination and takes the visitor back in time to a place of wonder with grounds carefully groomed yet teeming with flowering shrubs and orange trees and punctuated by whimsical sculptures that hint of ancient Greece and Rome.
Later, we went on to Santa Barbara, to the Montecito Inn. We treated ourselves to a special room complete with fireplace and jacuzzi tub. Nice.
The hotel was founded in the 1920s by Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. We all know Charlie 
Chaplin and some of us even recall Fatty Arbuckle. Unfortunately, he fell from grace somehow and while later proven innocent of the charges laid against him, never regained his good reputation. The Montecito Inn is in, (wait for it folks), Montecito, a small unincorporated city just outside of Santa Barbara. It is a place for celebrities, we are told. They are the only ones who can afford to live here. This is where Oprah has a house and a large group of others including Cheryl Tiegs, Kirk Douglas, well, you get the idea. The median price for a house in Santa Barbara is about $900,000. We think we will stay in Vancouver.
Santa Barbara is a beautiful city filled with Spanish architecture, old and new. It looks clean and well heeled. It’s main drag, State Street, is lined with upscale shops and a wide variety of restaurants. It is also lined with homeless people hoping to get enough money to afford dinner, (or something else) before the day ends, an unfortunate and sad reality that faces this city and others.
State street runs all the way down to the ocean, to Stearns Wharf, a place that is also lined with seafood restaurants and tourist focused shops. In the summer, Stearns Wharf also plays host to
pelicans and other sea birds who perch on the edges of what was once a working pier. Today, there were no pelicans and even the seagulls were hard-pressed to provide much entertainment given the strong wind and rough sea. The wharf is definitely more inviting in the summer.
Tomorrow, we are off to Laguna Beach. I’ll let you know how it goes.
