Highway One Road Trip to Santa Barbara

Highway One Road Trip: Santa Barbara to Los Angeles

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Another glorious day in Southern California, kicked off by an early-morning swim on the rooftop pool and a dip in the hot tub as the sun rose over the Santa Ynez Mountains in the distance.

santa barbara, california, travel

Despite Helle’s constant pleas to dine al fresco, pleas to which I normally succumbed — she’s a Dane, after all, you can’t blame her for wanting to be in the sun 24/7 while she’s still got it — I won this breakfast debate and got my wish to eat at the NY Times-recommended Tupelo Junction Cafe. The Times may have disappointed me many of times in the past, including three glaring grammatical errors in one single issue’s headlines a few weeks back and a highly inaccurate story on CouchSurfing that I pitched them oh three years prior, but it did not let me down this time.

santa barbara, tupelo junction cafe, california, travel, road trip

A pumpkin oatmeal waffle with caramelized bananas and candied walnuts later, and I was ready to head to the pier for a bit, and give Helle her 10 minutes of beach time, before hitting the road again for the final destination: Los Angeles!

santa barbara, california, travel, photography

We were on somewhat of a tight schedule, as we had to meet the VIP concierge, this little French guy Cedric who quite resembled Project Runway‘s Christian, hair and all, at 1:30, but per the norm, we were a good half an hour late. We checked into our suite at the InterContinental Century City, and immediately inhaled the fruit and cheese left for us. Helle walked into the room holding raisins on a vine and said, “why do you think they would give us old grapes?” I totally didn’t get the joke and thought they had just shriveled in the sun. I mean, come on, have you ever been served raisins on a vine before?

los angeles, california, travel, photography, century city

The InterContinental was quite nice, particularly if you’re a business traveler, but I was more interested in the fact that the Fox lot was literally in our backyard and that Cedric accidentally let it slip that they often host the contestants of American Idol and other reality shows. I spent the remainder of our stay keeping my eyes peeled for David Cook and Brooke White. No such luck unfortunately.


InterContinental Century City, LA from krysleigh on Vimeo.

After our tour of the facilities with Cedric, we only had a couple hours before we had to be back for cocktails with the GM, so they arranged a car—a Mercedes, if you will—to take us to Rodeo Drive, which did not bother me one bit, as I had about reached my driving capacity in recent days.

beverly hills, california, travel

I was surprised at how vacated Rodeo was. Granted, it was 3pm on a Wednesday, but where were LC and Audrina? Posh and Katie? Heck, I would have been satisfied with Nicole and Paris. (Are they even friends these days? I can’t keep up!)

beverly hills, california, rodeo drive, travel

Confession: This was my first jaunt to LA. I know, I know, I claim to be a travel writer, I’ve visited 50-something countries and 43 U.S. states, and I haven’t even been to one of America’s most popular cities. So doing the whole tourist thing and taking embarrassingly cheesy photos was fine by me. I had never had much of a desire to visit LA, despite it being home to the lovely China (photo to come) and an obsession by pal Lemon, but it never really held much appeal to me before. I was pleasantly surprised to love it. That said, I could never live there: Traffic stressed me out to no end, and I don’t like having to plan my days around not being on the road between 3 and 8pm.

beverly hills sign, california, travel, photography

Shopping on Rodeo Drive also opened my eyes to something else: how dumb (some) Americans can be. We were in Gap, probably our fifth in just as many days (odd really, as I normally purchase maybe one thing from the franchise each calendar year; this season, I think I own the entire line), and the sales associate—a flaming gay guy with an accent, I must add—asked Helle where she was from. “Denmark,” he responded, in an almost questioning tone. “That’s nice…isn’t that in Belgium?” And it would only get worse in coming days.

century city, california, los angeles, travel

After Helle finally had luck at the Levi’s store and sampled her first cupcake (they have Crumbs in Beverly Hills? Who knew?), and I peed in Barneys (hey, if you can’t afford to buy anything there, you can at least use the facilities, no?), we called our driver(!) and hurried home to shower before our cocktails with some hotel VIPs.

sunset boulevard, hollywood, california, travel, ketchup

It was really great seeing China again after more than a year since our last meet-up in Manhattan. And I admire her for ditching her normal adversity to anything scenester and joining us at Ketchup, because well, it definitely was an experience. I wouldn’t say I’d necessarily recommend it—the food was decent enough, service not so much—but it was the ambiance that really appealed to me. Still, if you’re a teenybopper or middle-aged woman throwing an all-girls night (as those seemed to be the other demographics the restaurant attracted), maybe you’ll find it appealing.

COMMENTS
  • April 18, 2008
    k

    i only have been to la once (and the true purpose of the visit was to take an exam) and i was not impressed.

    too much concrete, too many cars, and too much smog. and i’m probably a bit too low maintenance to live there.

  • April 20, 2008
    Abby

    I’m glad that you liked LA! Next time you visit I’ll show you the other side – the one with the gorgeous nature trails, beaches, and gardens.

    I think LA gets a bum rap because it’s so big and you need to use the freeways to get around. The traffic does SUCK, I won’t argue there – I have had several meltdowns during rush hour traffic and even had a guy on a motorcycle kick my car WHILE IN TRAFFIC.

    However, with the bad also comes the good – there’s something for everyone in LA, whether you love to shop (I know of at least two really good outlet malls here), love to spend time at the beach (there are TONS along Pacific Coast Highway), love to dine in fine restaurants (there are lots of 5-star restaurants here, especially on the west side), love to spend time in the outdoors (hiking and trails galore)… you get the point.

    In order to see the “true” LA you should spend at least a week here. One or two days won’t cut it!

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