California from toe to top in ten days

LA Times staffer Christopher Reynolds, one of my favorite travel writers, set out on New Year’s Day to cruise the entire zig-zagging length of California’s coast, from the southern end of San Diego County to Crescent City at the Oregon border, in ten days. He decided to cling to the coast and sleep only in lodgings along the water.

Chris shares a compelling mile-by-mile account and ultimately finds his 1,136-mile trek a “sweet trip,” despite some rocky patches. His travelogue is an ode to off-season travel: bare beaches, thinner traffic, empty lodgings and the characters he met along the way. He writes:

To consume the California coast in a single gulp, never mind the off-season, never mind the off-year — is more than a meal. It’s a revelation, a rediscovery, a marathon. Or maybe I should just rely on the words of Mike, the 40-year-old Coloradan I found on Day 4 north of Santa Barbara, sitting on a driftwood log in his boxers, still soaked from a spontaneous leap into the Pacific.

“This is as good as it gets,” he said. “For two minutes, you don’t feel old and fat anymore.”

You’ll want to read the entire piece here.

Savoring the holiday weekend in SoCal

I did an interview this week with LAist Editor Zach Behrens, who asked about SoCal getaways for the holiday weekend and my new project, the Seal Beach Daily website.

On long weekends I like to escape up the coast or plan a kickback retreat to the desert. But this tumultuous season of fires, storms and economic meltdowns feels like a good time to stick closer to home. So I suggested a handful of day trips. Among them: the California landscape exhibit at the Long Beach Museum of Art. Orange County’s timeless Crystal Cove. Southern California’s other Wine Country. Bargain hunting in LA’s Fashion District.

Browse the entire LAist interview here.

More buzz: Check out Shelby Grad’s nice take today on the LAist interview at the LAT’s LA Now blog. Michelle Vranizan Rafter also writes about Seal Beach Daily at the excellent Word Count website.

**Photo of the Seal Beach Pier by Kate Cohen/Seal Beach Daily

Two authors, the next president and a burger shack

Santa Barbara travel writer Pico Iyer shares an essay in Time magazine about his chance encounter with Barak Obama in Hawaii.

“It was three days before the New Year in late 2006, and I was eating a burger with the traveler and writer Paul Theroux on Oahu’s North Shore. Beside us in the rickety little shack was a quintessentially Hawaiian group of Chinese Americans, African Americans, semi–Southeast Asians and kids who could have been any or all of the above, waiting for the dad in the group to bring over their avocado burgers from the counter. It took Paul and me a few seconds to realize that the dad in question — who looked like a skinny teenager — was, in fact, the freshman Senator from Illinois, who was expected to enter the presidential race in the next week or two…”

At Sunset Magazine’s travel blog, editor Amy Wolf wonders: What burger shack was it that happened to be serving Pico Iyer, Paul Theroux, and Barack Obama at the very same time? And how good were the burgers?

Malibu getaway: Checking in to check out the high-tech toys

Juliana Shallcross, an editor at HotelChatter.com, posts an iPhone hotel review from Malibu’s Billionaire’s Beach:

When we found out that The Malibu Beach Inn was running the world’s first iPhone guest management system, Hotel Evolution, naturally we had to go and try it out.

Despite the hotel’s website telling us that rooms were a steep $385 a night (on a Tuesday in a recession), we actually found a rate of $258 within the site. We clicked on one of their promotions which was offering a room and dinner for select days only. Our day happened to be a select day.

So a few hours later we were checking into the Malibu Beach Inn on PCH…

Keep reading here.

David Geffen opened his refurbished Malibu Beach Inn last fall, promising the “true Malibu experience” and allowing only registered guests to dine in his hotel restaurant. Since then, room rates aren’t the only thing that have dropped: I received a recent promo email announcing that the Malibu Beach Inn welcomes reservations for Thanksgiving dinner. A follow up call revealed that the hotel restaurant is now open to visitors the rest of the year, too, — with or without a room reservation.

*Updated: The New York Times does a round up on hotels offering the latest tech tools: “Hotels are under such pressure to keep up with their gadget-obsessed guests that they are working with technology companies to regain their edge.” Read more here.

Playing hooky in Laguna Beach

As Southern California’s Indian summer blazes on, now is an ideal time for Laguna Beach getaway. Perched midway between LA and San Diego, Laguna is one of SoCal’s most picturesque beach towns, a lush tangle of palms and runaway bougainvillea snaking across stucco walls and tiled roofs along Pacific Coast Highway.

Tourists and SoCal revelers overrun the city during summer (and on holiday weekends throughout the year) when traffic crawls, parking is impossible, and the sidewalks downtown disappear beneath the crush of more people than they were ever meant to hold. During fall, though, Laguna exhales. It’s the time of year the locals love best, when this Orange County beach town of 24,000 goes back to being a welcoming Shangri-la again. On weekdays, the beach sits tantalizingly empty.

For starters, check out the waves at Thalia Street, an easy-to-miss cul de sac where a curving set of steps leads to the sand below. It’s a sweet spot: Locals come to here to surf and skim-board. The downside: there’s no parking lot, so you’ll have to hunt for a spot on a nearby street.

If you’re feeling energetic, set out for walk along the beach. Or head to Laguna Canyon Road and hike through the inland wilds of Laguna Coast Wilderness Park. Or grab a triple latte and hit the sidewalks to sample Laguna’s art galleries and one-of-kind boutiques. There’s a slew of shops and restaurants clustered downtown, close to Main Beach and its famous basketball courts on the sand. But don’t stop there. Many of Laguna’s treasures are scattered farther south along Coast Highway, away from the touristy hub.

In the 1200 block of Coast Highway, for instance, you’ll find a wonderfully eclectic mix at the Old Pottery Place, including delicious world cuisine and an outdoor patio at Sapphire; gourmet picnic fixings at the adjacent Sapphire pantry; and the friendly Laguna Beach Books. Across the street, the Rooftop Lounge at the La Casa Del Camino serves up mojitos and prime views of the coastline.

If you’re up for a splurge, book a room — or just make lunch reservations — at the Surf and Sand Hotel, a landmark resort carved into the side of an oceanfront cliff. The waves are so close, so intense, that the sound of pounding surf seems to follows you everywhere at the Surf and Sand.

For dinner: Treat yourself to Eva’s, a delectable Carribbean kitchen in a South Laguna cottage. The restaurant is a riot of color — lime green walls, orange ceiling, small pink lights twinkling in the palms — and softly lit by the sea of candles that line the dining room. So warm. So fun.

Before you go: Request a Visitor’s Guide from the Laguna Beach Visitors Bureau. This slim (free) volume tucks easily into a pocket.

Don’t forget: Bring a pocketful of quarters. Laguna Beach has meters all over town and you’ll need change to park.

P.S. Here’s a map.

Summer Staycation

The LA Times business section looks at this summer’s travel trend — the staycation. Faced with sky-high gas prices, many Southern California travelers are planning getaways close to home. Hotel reservations here are up from last summer (by 9 percent, says the Times) and families are loading up the car and driving to area theme parks and attractions that don’t involve costly air travel.

Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., said Southern California might have a unique advantage over other major regions of the nation in weathering the downturn in travel.

“You have 21 million people in Southern California, so there is a big market right in your own backyard,” Kyser said. At the same time, “there are a lot of things to partake in without going far such as Catalina Island. Our backyard is a pretty exotic and fun place.”

Booksellers are seeing a renewed interest in close-to-home travel books. At the Barnes and Noble Marina Pacifica in Long Beach, for example, community events director Cindy Patterson has created a special SoCal travel table and shoppers are snapping up her selections. I’m delighted that Cindy’s picks include Great Escapes: Southern California.

*Photo: a slice of Malibu’s spectacular coast, courtesy of Veronique de Turenne. Malibu is one of the cool getaways featured in Great Escapes: Southern California.

Great Escapes Excerpt: Savoring Crystal Cove

Every day at sunset, the flag is ceremoniously hoisted at Crystal Cove.

The martini flag, that is.

The tradition dates back to the early 1930s, when the first families cruising Coast Highway in their Ford roadsters stumbled upon this former rum smugglers’ haven along the Orange County oceanfront. They staked their summertime claims with tents in the sand and surfed on simple planks of balsa wood. After the late-afternoon martini ritual, everyone gathered for nights for nights of tiki parties and luaus and bonfires on the shore.

The squatters returned to Crystal Cove year after year, from Memorial Day through Labor Day, and gradually put up thatched cottages on the bluffs—shacks with fabulous views. They cobbled together their summer homes from hunks of driftwood and leftovers scavenged from old Hollywood movie sets, thoughtfully left behind by silent-era filmmakers. “I often say that I was the luckiest girl in the world,” says Laura Davick, whose parents met here during the 1940s tent-camping era and later snapped up one of the original cottages for $2,000 in 1960. “I grew up here.”

Remarkably, Crystal Cove and its ramshackle colony have survived as a timeless paradise even as developers transformed the rest of Orange County’s villages, farms, and namesake citrus groves into mile after mile of suburban tracts, condos, and shopping centers. The drafty little cottages on the bluffs passed from generation to generation, until the Irvine Company finally sold Crystal Cove to the state of California for $32 million. The sale forced out the renters but ended up opening the cottages to everyone.

Nestled between Newport Beach and Laguna Beach, Crystal Cove is now a 2,791-acre state park that boasts a spectacular sweep of beachfront and, since summer 2006, freshly refurbished rustic cottages where you can stay overnight and soak up a perfect old California experience.

Yes, paradise has been restored and is being carefully tended by the nonprofit Crystal Cove Alliance, which Davick now runs. The cove’s cottages, though, are so popular that reservations disappear as soon they become available on the first day of every month. Even if you can’t score a cottage, Crystal Cove State Beach makes an exceptional day trip, an idyllic spot for an afternoon at the beach. And you’ll find those martinis (along with breakfast, lunch and dinner) here.

Summer travel tips: Car-free Santa Barbara

Cruising to Santa Barbara for the weekend always sounds wondrous (the beaches! the biking! the hurricane margaritas at the Palace Grill! Those zoo giraffes that eat right from your hand!). But then there’s the inevitable freeway to face on Friday afternoon (or any afternoon, really). Someone hiccups in a car just up ahead on the101 freeway and suddenly you’re stopped dead somewhere below Thousand Oaks and can’t seem to get rolling again. So you crawl through the bumper-to-bumper mess in Camarillo and then noodle your way around the stop-and-start gridlock near Oxnard.

By the time you finally spy the landmark Big Yellow House on the hill at Summerland, your easy two-hour getaway has morphed into nearly four hours—and counting—of traffic hell.

Memo to self: Next time, take the train.

Santa Barbara is an ideal destination for a car-free escape, especially with gas prices at record highs this summer. “One of the great pleasures in life,” says Ralph Festig, president of the Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition, “is being on the train and watching the traffic on the 101 as you go past.”

My book Great Escapes: Southern California includes a chapter exploring an easy car-free getaway to the Central Coast. You can board the train at Union Station in Los Angeles (there are numerous suburban stops, too) and step off two 2 hours and 36 minutes later at the Santa Barbara station on State Street, the city’s main drag. Hotels, restaurants, shopping, the beach, and amazing farmers’ markets are just steps away.

Santa Barbara’s Car-Free Project even offers discounts to visitors who leave their cars at home — deals on Amtrak fares, hotels, and attractions such as wine-country tours in the comfort of a biodiesel-powered Mercedes van. You can request a handy (and free) info pack from Santa Barbara’s Car-Free Project here. Also be sure to visit Green Santa Barbara, too.

Catalina’s newest attraction

Here’s a frame grab from a video of a sweet newborn filly, the first horse born on Catalina Island in seventeen years.

Goodbye Travel Rut — My New Book is Here

When my husband and I plotted a monthlong trip to Europe, I spent weeks researching every detail. I amassed a bedside mountain of travel books. I quizzed friends about their adventures in the French countryside, scoured travel websites, and rented movies set in our intended destinations (I watched American Dreamer so many times I felt like a regular at Paris’ swanky Hôtel de Crillon). By the time we left, we had an adventurous, offbeat itinerary filled with cool new restaurants to try and treks to out-of-the-way corners I’d missed on previous trips abroad.

But for getaways close to home, I’ve always tended to go for the easy and familiar. Over and over. It’s just so effortless to say, let’s go to Palm Springs, which invariably means checking into the same desert resort my family always visits, with its comfortable, airy rooms and twisting water slide that keeps the kids entertained. Enjoyable, yes. But after the umpteenth trip, hardly exciting.

Then last year I was asked to write a travel book of great weekend getaways in Southern California.

Goodbye travel rut.

Suddenly I began looking at Southern California through fresh eyes. A travel writer’s eyes. Nearly every week I went someplace different: Date nights. Day trips. Weekend treks to my favorite spots and to places I’d always meant to visit, like Cold Springs Tavern near Santa Barbara.

My husband and two children often came along and they had a blast kayaking, horseback riding, swimming, snorkeling, hand-feeding emus, and roaming luscious nature spots from San Diego to the Central Coast. Other times I set out on the road (or train) alone with California writers such as Raymond Chandler, Joan Didion, Kem Nunn, Gidget, and the Steinbecks (John and son Thomas) as my guides.

I sampled my way through two wine countries, played blackjack in the afternoon, cooked alongside a great chef, savored amazing farmers’ markets and ethnic groceries all over, swam with schools of bright, teeming fish, and strapped on water-skis for the first time in years.

I recently wrote about five of my favorite SoCal road trips for the Los Angeles Times and I wanted to share these quick getaways as summer approaches. The story, and this handy Google map, offer a taste of the adventures in my new book, Great Escapes: Southern California, which is being released on Monday.