Fear the Crab

Tuesday, 9/14, started with a trip to the Breakfast Club, which was highly recommended by the waitress at Happy Dragon. I had biscuits in spicy sausage gravy, something I haven’t had in quite a while, and it really filled me up such that I wouldn’t need lunch. Checked out of the Best Western and began the long drive south to Hearst Castle. Along the way, we stopped by Point Lobos for some scenic views and the Whalers Cabin museum.

We had expected the drive along CA-1 to be slow and winding, but nothing on paper really prepared us for the actual experience. Road conditions were okay and the weather was beautiful, but 3 hours of turns, traffic, and tourists slowly gnawed away at our sanity, even with the pretty vistas. And we only stopped at one vista. Once you’ve looked at the Pacific Ocean from the edge of a 500-foot cliff, all other views are eerily similar!

Arriving at Hearst Castle was a definite treat. We were glad to stretch our legs, and we got there with 25 minutes to spare before our 15:40 tour.

Unfortunately, midway through the tour my camera started to run out of battery, and I had foolishly left the spare in the car. Some of the photos were taken with Maile’s iPhone4. What I did manage to capture left me without enough words to accurately describe the splendor and ostentation of the estate, so I’ll let the pictures do all the talking.

At the end of the tour there was a 40-minute movie playing at the visitor center, but we were getting hungry and still needed to continue south towards Solvang. After San Simeon the CA-1 wasn’t as winding, thankfully, and we managed to reach San Luis Obispo in about an hour.

Acting on a suggestion from The Galbraith we luckily scored a table at the Gold Rush Steakhouse, at the Madonna Inn. Dinner was awesome, and in such large portions that I had to box up half of my ribeye. The restaurant decor was definitely “memorable,” equally so the waterfall urinal in the men’s bathroom (I looked, but did not touch).

From SLO it was another hour of straight highway to Solvang, and we arrived close to 21:30, near about when most motel front desks in this small Dutch town close for the night. We first tried the Hamlet Motel, but they only had one room available (and the four of us weren’t going to share). The Kronborg Inn down the street was able to accommodate us, thankfully. The rooms were nice and comfortable, but our place unfortunately had slow drainage in the bathroom. Since we were only going to stay one night we figured it best to endure it rather than complain, plus it was already late.