California dreaming. I’d been doing it for a long time. The weather, the natural beauty, the cities, the endless blue ocean, the wine, the food…it was time to make it a reality in 2015. Sean and I had both been before, but about 20+ years ago as kids. We were ready to experience this beautiful place again as adults. This is the first of three posts about our California road trip.

Although we’ve traveled a good bit this year, this trip to California was our only week-long vacation of the year. It was just the two of us, starting in San Francisco and driving down the Pacific Coast Highway to San Diego, with stops along the way. We had two perfectly sunny and warm days in San Francisco to kick off our trip

We were set to arrive late Friday night but had a serious flight emergency (a bird flew into the engine of our plane on takeoff and we had to return to the airport in Denver for an emergency landing) so we ended up sleeping in the airport and then getting a super-early flight to SF where we slept some more. It turned out to be enough sleep for us to get through the day after a quick shower at our Airbnb in the Castro district.

We headed down to Fisherman’s Warf for lunch, a walk along the water and views of Alcatraz and the bay. A sourdough bread bowl with clam chowder from Boudin was the perfect meal after a looooong night of travel!

It was fairly warm – 68 degrees – so we were pretty happy to be outside and walk around. We quickly discovered that walking around in San Francisco is quite a workout. Those aren’t hills, those are cliffs! Whew! Luckily, Uber is everywhere and we booked it over to Union St. to poke around in the cute shops, look at all the adorable and fun row houses, and enjoy an afternoon coffee al fresco. We also stopped in Belga, a Belgian brasserie, for a beer and a snack. 

In the early evening, we went to Cellarmaker, one of the main breweries on Sean’s list and snagged two seats at the bar just before the place got packed. This brewery focused on IPAs and pale ales. The Wicked Juicy, their main IPA, was probably the most delicious IPA I have ever had. I’m still craving it.

While at the bar, we chatted with the couple next to us who told us to check out the Monk’s Kettle, a great beer bar. Love getting tips from the locals!

Even though we knew there was more to see and do, we opted for a nap before dinner. It was needed. We took the tram over to Ichi Sushi but were pretty early for our reservation so we went across the street to Bel – another Belgian bar. This one was far more authentic and gave me the experience I’d been looking for. Great service, too.

Ichi was disappointing in some ways. My rolls were great – the fish was fresh and delicious – I had a saltwater trout in one. Sean’s chirashi bowl (pictured below) was more like the lunch special at the chain RA sushi. Beautiful sashimi thoughtfully displayed over rice it was most decidedly not. The Japanese pancake had a sickly sweet-sticky sauce that overtook everything else and the service was pretty aloof. Such a bummer. It seems you have to get the omakase at this place to have the experience everyone raves about. Oh well.

The next day we slept in a little (well, it seemed that way to us because of the time change) and then headed out to the Golden Gate Bridge for the views and some walking. It was the perfect day – even warmer than the one before.

We also drove through Golden Gate Park and several other neighborhoods before brunch at Hawker Fare in the Mission. I’d found this Thai/Asian eatery online and was drawn to one dish in particular that they only offered at brunch: Khao Mun Gai. I wrote about this dish in my “Best Things I Ate in Bangkok” post as the top dish I’d eaten there. I haven’t seen it anywhere in Atlanta so we were thrilled to have it again. It was delicious. And so was the Pad Kra Pao Moo (wok-tossed ground pork, crushed Thai chilis, garlic, oyster sauce & Thai basil) that came with jasmine rice, a fried egg and green papaya salad.

A little more walking and then it was off to The Rare Barrel in Berkely for some incredible sour beers. We were there for awhile and ended up tasting everything they had. Brought a couple bottles home, too.

No nap on this day – once we got back to San Francisco and parked the car we were off to explore the Castro district with it’s rainbow crosswalks, old-time theatre and funky shops. The people-watching was fantastic.

We decided to walk to dinner at Aster and had to climb a very steep hill along the way. When we got to the top, we were overlooking a park with the San Francisco skyline beyond. Quite a payoff!

Aster was incredible. Definitely my favorite meal of the trip. They started us off with their homemade sourdough bread and housemade butter. A real treat! The rest of our meal got better from there.

Top to Bottom and Left to Right: chilled golden beet soup with mussels, crumbled pistachios and dill; sweetbreads with pickled summer squash, charred pepper and thyme; potato-caraway dumplings with maitake mushrooms, yogurt, Brussels sprouts and lemon; lamb with cabbage, quince, sunchokes and hibiscus.

While everything was delicious, it was the soup that was the standout for me. Our server brought the bowl over with only the dill, mussels and crumbled pistachios in it. She then poured the golden beet soup in the bowl from a small carafe. Exquisite presentation. We enjoyed our food with a cabernet franc. 

We stopped by the Monk’s Kettle after dinner and after 1/2 a beer all I wanted to do was sleep. But Sean wanted to try more things and kept us there a lot longer. Oh, the things we do for love… 😉 <3

We were on the road before 7am the next day to get out to Point Lobos Reserve before the crowds. I didn’t really know if there’d be large crowds since it was the off-season, but I’d read that it was a popular place so I figured it was better safe than sorry.

As soon as we got onto Highway 1, the views appeared. And so we had to stop to gawk. It was amazing and we knew it was just the beginning of all the natural coastal beauty we were about to see.

We stopped at an adorable bakery and coffee shop in Santa Cruz and arrived at Point Lobos at 10am. We had made excellent time and spent the next 3 hours walking the trails, wandering around coves and climbing onto some rocks. Every corner yielded a new view and even the same cove from a different angle looked completely different. We were mesmerized and enchanted by this place of cypress trees, natural arches and rocky shorelines.

Our next stop for the day was Carmel-by-the-sea, where we’d intended to have lunch but had stayed so longer than planned at Point Lobos and had ended up eating the sourdough and brie we’d brought with us. We had a quick snack at Grasing’s then walked up and down the quaint, cottage-lined streets, popping into galleries and boutiques. A charming, romantic and expensive little town.

Our hotel was in Monterey – we used hotel points here for a free night’s stay, wahoo! It was walking distance to Cannery Row and we went for wine tastings with views of the bay at dusk. Very pretty.

Sean and I like to travel out of season – it’s less busy, things are cheaper, etc. but one drawback is that it gets dark early. It’s not always a big deal, but when it’s pitch black at 6pm and you want to have dinner overlooking the water it’s a bit of a bummer. However, I still prefer to travel this time of year and we fortunately didn’t have any experiences of anything being closed that we wanted to do.

This adorable little wine tasting room was right next to our hotel. Pierce Vineyards. We ended up bringing home a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Syrah. Yum!

And that’s it for our first leg of the trip. Cities, coastline, breweries, landmarks, hikes and food – pretty good, if I do say so myself. Part 2 covers our drive along the Central Coast and Big Sur, and our time in Solvang.