So I had a great time off at the end of last year. My husband and I decided to take a road trip down the coast of California, to San Diego, and then Vegas.
On the way to San Diego, we stopped by San Simeon and toured Hearst Castle - the mansion of the media mogul, William Hurst. The Castle is grand and opulent with 100+ rooms, an on-site safari-like zoo, huge indoor and outdoor Roman bath pools, movie theaters, etc. The movie stars used to flock here and this used to be the place to be.
While in the area, we stopped by the Central Coast wine country in Paso Robles. The Central Coast area has about 100+ wineries in compared so the 400-500 wineries in Napa/Sonoma. We found this wonderful winery, the Justin Winnery, that makes exceptionally great carbs and red Bordeaux blends at the quality of a very expensive Napa Valley wine but for about half of the price. After tasting about 10 of their wines including the more high-end ones, my favorite is still their low-end $21 carb because it is really best carb I have ever had and it tastes like it should be a $50 bottle. Their top-of-the line, the Isosceles (which we didn't get to taste), has been on the list of top 100 wines in the world even beating some Chateauneuf du Papes (which are also my favorite). Justin Winery seems to put a lot of care into their wine making and I like their unique unfiltered wine technique. Anyway, we couldn't resist and had to join their wine club and have since also ordered more wine from them.
After Paso Robles, we stopped by Malibu, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, Venice Beach, and Laguna Beach. We had a great dinner in downtown Santa Barbara and a great lunch in Santa Monica downtown. I have been in the Malibu/Santa Monica area before but my husband has never been. So we had to stop by and check out the Santa Monica pier - the one with the Ferris Wheel and is featured in lots of movies.
In San Diego, we stayed at Mission Beach. I got a bit sick the first day there because we wore ourselves out running down the beach without getting breakfast first. Then we went to Coronado Island and saw the famous Cornado Hotel. We also went to La Jolla Shores to check their beach and had a great lunch there. Finally, we stopped by the touristy Old Town and had a really big Mexican meal that made me wish I would never eat Mexican food again.
Vegas was of course a lot of fun. We went to see the Cirque du Soleil Love show - the one with all the Beatles songs. I was singing Beatles songs for a couple days. As usual, my favorite thing to do is to try a bunch of new restaurants, including Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill with the best cornbread and cornmeal chille rellenos and a new Hong Kong restaurant with excellent 2-way Peking duck. This time, we didn't play any poker-room poker, which is usually our winning or breaking-even game. Instead we played a bunch of table games: blackjack, roulette, paigow, world-tour poker games (not the same as the poker-room poker games because here you are playing against the house rather than other players). We also played some video poker and very little slot machines. Obviously, since the house has an edge in all of these games, we budgeted and lost what we set out as entertainment money.
After Vegas, we were supposed to stop by Joshua Tree National Park for 2 days, but my husband was then under the weather and I was still a bit tired recovering from mine. So we cancelled the Joshua Tree trip and headed home early. Maybe Death Valley and Joshua Tree next time instead.
It was very hard to come back home after such a fun filled trip. It was even harder coming back to work after 2-3 weeks off.
