California Christmas 2024, pt. 2: the Roadtrip

December 27th: We got up early, but not too early, and walked up to Colorado Blvd to be first in line to pick up a rental car. Not a behorned Cadillac, but a nice new Prius that would wow us with its 50mpg efficiency—all that you behold in the following post was done on less than a tank of gas.

And then we zipped west over to an outpost of Homestate, our favorite LA-area breakfast taco emporium…and as luck would have it, it was but a few blocks away from a Sidecar Donut as well!

Energized, we enjoyed a session at the LA Temple, our favorite LA-area temple.

And then we drove to Santa Barbara. And let me tell you, it was not the zippy ride I had hoped (quite foolishly) that it would be. BUT in Santa Barbara I was reunited with Hannah from down the block/junior high/high school/New York and we ate a delicious late lunch at La Super-Rica (where the food did not come out as zippy quick as I foolishly had hoped).

And then we drove through the dark misty windy mountains to a destination worthy of the journey: The Madonna Inn!! It’s too bad I didn’t get any super-good night time establishing shots—this was hard to do as it was the misty night time when we got there. But I had been curious about visiting this famous hotel for many years and when we started making our little road trip plan I realized the opportunity I had been waiting for had presented itself. I booked us the “Voux” room, the picture below is from the website.

We dressed ourselves up for dinner at the restaurant’s famous Gold Rush Steakhouse for a nice steak dinner and a slice of their famous pink cake and then poked around the hotel a bit, too. After dinner I floated on my back in the pool looking up at the stars while Liz stayed dry and warm and read.

We woke up to a beautiful San Louis Obispo morning and got our extensive explore on, visiting the door of each of the hotel’s individually-themed rooms, imagining what wonders might be behind each door.

With our wonderful Madonna Inn time drawing to a close, it was time to drive down to the inspiration of our roadtrip…here’s a clue of what we were headed for…

Yes, a bit of Solvang, the Danish-Californian wonderland! It was a good walk around and explore but also I was at the point of vacation where I was taking a lot fewer photos because, well, I was a little tired of taking photos.

From Solvang we returned to Santa Barbara to visit the McDonalds that claims to have created the Egg McMuffin but evidence from 1995 shows that they just moved the Egg McMuffin plaque to this location.

From there we drove into downtown LA for a little Detroit snack of a suadero taco, suadero quesadilla (the suadero at Ditroit is major detour worthy), and a hibiscus meringue sundae.

And from there we went to Liz’s high school friend Kim’s apartment for a hang with Kim and her fiancee Alfredo and a little Thai dinner at Night + Market Song (good to see you again, startled pig)!

And then it was back to Grandma’s house with us. While we were away Emily had arrived and she took our porch photo the next morning when we left for LAX before 6am. Here’s a little behind the scenes info and a recommendation: We rented our car in Pasadena but booked it for an LAX return. The early Sunday morning traffic was 0 and when you return a car to LAX you take it to this giant parking lot on the opposite side of LAX from the usual crowds and the drop off process is basically instantaneous and then you get on a shuttle that takes you to your terminal real quick. It basically took it no time. Big recommendation.

And that was our Christmas! Soon I’ll be blogging to you about 2025! Can you believe it?