Tryphoon’s Lair

In this holiday season, nothing much goes on at the office so I decided to take the week off between Xmas and New Year and finally take the family out of the Thirty Miles Zone also known as Los Angeles…

After gathering intel from various coworkers and friends, we did set our mind up to a trip to Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo (SLO). So Wednesday evening, we decided to book a hotel, look at the map and set up stops and places to visit…

At first Sarah wasn’t that sure of my driving and kept offering to swap with me, until finally asking if she could drive from Santa Barbara to SLO, but I had to make it clear that practice makes things better and I was allowed to get back behind the wheel after a pretty poor meal on the beach in Santa Barbara, only punctuated by an attack of a group os seagulls…

After another couple of hours of driving, we finally made it to SLO and our hotel. Thanks to Expedia, everything was fine, room was booked OK and Thia had a large grown up bed just for her…

Day 2 of the break was the touristic day and resulted in the visit of Pismo Beach and its surfers (Thia met a Pelican) and the Hearst Castle, which against all odds, was extremely nice.

You might wonder why the suspicion? Well, what could go wrong when an American multi-zillionaire decides to buy castles, churches, missions, roman vilas and God knows what in Europe and Asia and works on a architectural mash-up on the top of a hill, on a 770 hectares piece of land, while running close to 30 businesses? Well, everything! But not this time… (See pics)

Our last day was mainly spent on the road, giving however a second chance to Santa Barbara, having blamed the guide and stopped at the harbor there. And this time, we really got why this is called the “Riviera of the US”… It just felt like Nice/Cannes and it has been decided that we will have to go back there at some point…

So all in all, cool little break, great sceneries and definitely  a new will to explore more of what this country has to offer!

As usual, more pictures in the pics section…