Southern California

Big Sur to San Diego

16.03.2009 - 22.03.2009
View Latin America on MattAnneka's travel map.

I've grown increasingly fond of California and, by and large, Californians too. Best of all was a guy who picked us up from the train station to take us to the Hertz rental office. He asked where I was from and when I said Nottingham he replied:

"Oh yeah, I know that place. There's an English actor I admire very much, Hugh Grant. He made a movie called Notting Ham."

I started to correct him but he had already introduced himself as being 'ex military' and still seem saddened by the ending of the Cold War, so I thought better of it. At the train station in San Francisco service men and women get to go straight to the front of the ticket queue...not sure that would really be enough to tempt me to sign up.

The coast south of San Francisco has proved to be just as spectacular and in some places just as foreboding as I'd imagined it would. There's been a lot of driving along the narrow, winding Coastal Highway 1 past some amazing scenary. We've also seen colonies of Elephant seals on beaches and sat in a hot tub perched on top of a cliff by the Pigeon Point Lighthouse as the sun went down. Aaaah.

Driving felt enough of a challenge but nothing compared to a guy we met who was attempting to do the whole road, all the way to San Diego, on a unicycle.

As we headed south the remoteness of Big Sur gradually faded and, after a couple of days camping, surrounded by giant RV's, in the Santa Barbara wine region (as seen in the film 'Sideways', we approached Los Angeles. Made a couple of stops in Malibu and Newport Beach (shameless fans of the OC...) before finally arriving in San Diego yesterday.

Was tempted to see a baseball game at the home of the Padres but the only information I could find out was that there was a ticket category classed as 'all you can eat'....but nothing on whether there was actually a game on today.