One of the highlights of the trip: Staying at the brand-new Hotel Intercontinental San Francisco for a fraction of the price. Thanks to an Internet deal, we secured a room for $129/night. That's the same price as the utterly dreadful motel we stayed at outside of Ojai (more on that later).
The downside of the Intercontinental: Like many expensive hotels catering to business travelers (and this one definitely does, as it's right down the street from the Moscone Center), just about everything costs money. Tiny hotels offer free WiFI, but the Intercontinental charges $12/day. And parking at the hotel was a jaw-dropping $50/day.
But we worked around it. We checked our email at the Apple Store in Union Square... and were too busy to be surfing the net. And like I wrote earlier, I scored free street parking thanks to the July 4 holiday. Meanwhile, we took advantage of the things that were free: The indoor swimming pool, the flat screen HDTV in our hotel room, the automatic coffee maker that made some of the best in-room coffee I've ever tried.
On the morning following Independence Day, it was time to once again hit the road. I woke up early to move the car -- the meters went back online at 7 a.m., so I found some free 2-hour street parking a few blocks south. Then Evan and I swam one more time, and before we knew it we were packed up and ready to go.
We decided to grab breakfast in the Hayes Valley part of town; we remember hitting Frjtz there last time with our pal Karen. This time we walked down the street and happened upon a art opening. At 9 a.m. on a Saturday.
But it wasn't your ordinary art show: It was an exhibit honoring a convenience store that had recently shut down, along with exhibits honoring the history of other Hayes Valley addresses.
The exhibit included free donuts and coffee. Sold.
We also stopped by La Boulange de Hayes, an outpost of an SF French bakery chain. Coffee was excellent, as were our pastries: A croissant bread pudding ($3) and a hazelnut croissant ($2.75). As one of the reviewers on Yelp notes, any restaurant that has Nutella readily available as a condiment is good enough for us.
Evan loved climbing on the spiderweb-like jungle gym (in the background, above) found in the minipark off Hayes. Then there's the sculpture, above. More details:
Our bellies filled with pastries and coffee, we sped right to the 101... and it was time to start heading south. We drove quite a distance, stopping before San Luis Obispo for lunch at... well, El Pollo Loco. Hey, we were hungry, and it was the only decent place in the shopping center we drove by.
Anyway, we kept heading South... and by the time we approached Pismo Beach, we were antsy. I spied a park out of the side of my eye that looked kid-friendly. I headed off the freeway... and smack into horrible Pismo Beach holiday weekend traffic.
But we finally got to the park, and it was awesome. Nice views of the cliff's edge, for starters.
But also a lot of green for Evan and daddy to run around. Apparently this is "Shell Beach."
Later, as we started to approach the town of Buellton, we started seeing the famous road-side signs touting pea soup. We've been fascinated for years.
Why pea soup, of all things? Is it any good? We decided that this trip, we'd finally see what the noise was all about. So we took the exit into tiny Buellton, and right there was the famous Andersen's.
Unfortunately, you can't just saunter up to a to go window and order a cup of pea soup. Nope, you gotta get a table, sit down and order. We decided to sit at the counter, so that they'd get the hint that we were here just for the soup.
Maria had hope after seeing the mint plant out front that she'd underestimated how good it might be. So we decided to go through with it.
I took a bite... and our initial instincts were correct.
It was horrible.
It was puke-olive-green-clearly-poured-from-a-can horrible. The taste itself was nothing special. THIS is what an entire town had staked its visitor reputation on?
Still, I'm glad, I suppose, that we did our part for the little town. Inside Andersen's, there's an upstairs museum that tells the history of Buellton... and how a rerouting of the 101 passed them by. The owner behind Andersen's had an idea on how to drum up business: Plant flags up and down the former section of 101 that passed through town. Call it "Avenue of Flags." Then-Gov. Ronald Reagan even flew in to inaugurate the big initiative.
Now, 40 years later, I get the feeling that it's all been downhill at Buellton since the day the Governor visited.
By the way, I'm a cheap enough sumbitch that I wasn't about to let the $5.50 I paid for the soup go to waste.
Ugh. This would come back to haunt me later. That's all you need to know about that.
We eventually made it to our hotel, a pretty crappy motel in Oak View, right outside of Ojai. Quite a let down from the Intercontinental to the Oakridge Inn. On the plus side, free WiFi. On the downside, the hotel's gross.
It's mostly my fault, having waited until the last minute to book a room in Ojai. We weren't sure for the longest time where we'd spend our last night, and by the time we settled on Santa Barbara or Ojai, everything was booked everywhere (damn holiday weekend). To that end, the Oakridge at least was in the right spot, and wasn't ridiculously expensive.
We dropped off our bags and then drove over to Ojai, where we walked along the old shops and hung out in the park across the street. As it got late, we weren't too hungry -- damn you again, pea soup! -- but we eventually decided to drive out to Boccali's Pasta and Pizza.
The sad news: We got there right after 9. And apparently Ojai shuts down at 9. After some convincing, we at least were able to order spaghetti for the kid... Maria and I weren't all that hungry, so their early shut down actually allowed us to order food just for Evan without guilt.
Next up: The final day.
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