Saturday: Santa Monica Farmers Market

There were friends booked in for supper at the Venice house, and Miss Whistle & So Lovely had recommended the Santa Monica Farmers Market for our grocery shopping so we sketched out a skeleton menu and headed off in my white chariot to see what was in season over here.


There’s great pleasure to be had from filling a hessian shopping bag with fresh produce: for the grilled vegetables I had planned, I chose a plump head of fennel with two feet of fronds, a fat bunch of young asparagus, each stalk the width of a pencil, spring onions (scallions), and big round red onions. JK found local honey for her chicken marinade, sweet smelling tomatoes, a great bunch of fragrant basil, unwaxed lemons and tiny crisp cucumbers, and we added three yielding avocados, bok choy and organic eggs to the haul.


It was almost incomprehensibly cheap to New Yorkers used to paying at least $3 or $4 dollars at the Union Square Greenmarket for any vegetable. Here the fennel and bok choy were a dollar a throw, and so on.


With a pit stop at the supermarket for essentials, our menu became grilled chicken with a ginger, garlic & honey marinade. I bashed up the basil & minced garlic with a glug of olive oil to baste the fennel, asparagus, scallions and red onions before grilling them.


Pudding was simply the three pints of strawberries I had bought from a farmer in the Santa Ynes valley on Friday afternoon. The avocados, tomatoes and lemons became handmade guacamole with aid of some of the red onion, minced, and a shot of chili sauce.


As we prepped the food in the vast, airy and light filled kitchen, we turned up the music and sang along to cheesy MTV hits. As I finished chopping and mashing the gauc ingredients, we started to scoop it up with plain tortilla chips, washing our mouthfuls down with swigs of Corona. A perfect evening, before the guests had even arrived.

Picture of the day: Santa Monica Farmers Market haul

Easter Saturday: Venice & Santa Monica

We stayed in Venice for just two nights at JK’s ex-pat brother’s US home, as a prelude to three days of proper holiday at Ojai Valley Inn & Spa in the hills above Santa Barbara. The pale blue painted clapboard house is huge, everything I had thought a beach house should be, with glass walls to the yard, baths so deep I could sit practically submerged, and a kitchen that paid homage to the gods of cooking: Sub Zero, Viking et al.

We decided Saturday was errand & pottering day. We wandered through Santa Monica, buying vegetables & fruit at the Farmers Market, before lunch at Urth Caffé on Main Street. Sad to report, it was execrable. A revolting omelette, composed of a rectangular raft of pallid, rubbery egg with a few (good) mushrooms entombed therein, and some greasy cheese smeared across the top was redeemed only by some delicious toasted sourdough. At the very least, I had hoped for some good people watching, but the clientele was, in the main, badly dressed twenty somethings, stroppy teenagers and a few skinny twiglets pushing food around their plates.

We hit upon Urth Caffé mainly because it was a block away from Yoga Works where JK was booked for an afternoon session of bend & contort. I couldn’t imagine anything I wanted to do less than expose my malcordinated, morgue-pale, English body to a room of bendy Angelenos, so headed down the street to get my nails painted a lurid shade of candy pink in homage to the trashier side of LA.

Parking myself at a café with my laptop to await JK’s release from yoga hell, I was somewhat reassured by the gentle progression of Lycra-clad, wobble-bodied yoga aficionados heading into the studio for the next class. Another of my preconceptions shattered: apparently LA’s entire population isn’t composed of malnourished stick insects after all.

Good Friday: San Luis Obispo to Los Angeles

I was a grumpy cow by the time I picked JK up from Long Beach airport on Friday evening. The day had started well with breakfast from here,


followed by a gentle drive through magnificent countryside from San Luis Obispo to La Purisima Mission just outside Lompoc where I investigated the restored Mission with its eerie, deserted church in a suitable frame of mind for Good Friday.



After stopping for three pints of picked-that-morning strawberries from a local farmer, I headed down to Santa Barbara on a fantastic drive through farmland and over the mountains, but the 101 was backed up for miles through SB and, after we cleared the traffic, my sat nav point blank refused to navigate me down the coast road, sneakily taking me back on the sodding freeway even though I had specifically requested no motorway routes.

Concrete highways make me fractious. And traffic makes me antsy so, even though night was falling, I took myself back to the PCH, with a white knuckle drive down the winding coast road through Malibu and into Santa Monica. That when I really started to thank my lucky stars that I am a confident driver as the roads widened into six lanes, seemingly filled with Kamikaze drivers with no road sense and zero driving politesse.

My sat nav route involved multiple lane changes through a web of linked roads and, at one point, took me from a far left lane across five lanes of speeding traffic to a right hand exit in the dark with just 800 yards notice. I was tempted to shut my eyes, flick the indicators and just go for it. Common sense won out, and I just trusted that no one would hit me as I shot across the lanes of traffic and onto the exit ramp at speed.

More shoes....

These are the other shoes I bought: petrol blue fringed suede $24.99 at, yup, Payless. I have to say that these don't look like disposable fashion to me. Kudos to Payless.

Picture of the day: Big Sur. 0630hrs

Sea meets sky.

Wednesday: Driving Big Sur & A Secret Mission

I’d love to be able to tell you all what I got up to in Big Sur on Wednesday night, but then I’d have to kill you. And, if I didn’t then my editor might. So, all I’m saying is that I spent the night in the most extraordinary place in the most extraordinary way. And when the piece is published maybe I’ll direct you to it. Maybe.

I left San Francisco a little later than I had planned in the afternoon, after yet another morning working in Sausalito library, detouring via L’s office and the post office to pick up my parcel, before burning down the 101 to Salinas, where I cut back through to the PCH. I was concerned that I otherwise I'd hit the coast road at the top of Big Sur too late at twilight, and I didn’t fancy those twisting roads and sheer cliff drops to the sea in the dark.

These three shots were taken along the PCH from at various points from Salinas to the lower end of Big Sur.

Picture of the day: A real, live (out of focus) Easter Bunny

I was complaining that we had had no Easter action today, and then on the way to the hotel spa I caught a movement in the rosemary bushes that line the pathways. Out hopped this Easter Sunday bunny. Enormously pleasing,

Happy Easter internets.

My new espadrilles

Thank you internets: I took your advice and purchased these espadrilles for the grand total of $20.99 from Payless Shoe Source. And, extremely unusually, I am actually modelling them for you, having bullied poor long suffering JK to take a photograph of my legs.

It did originally show my rather fab nautical navy short shorts, but as I have (a) streaky fake tan* and (b) a scabby knee where I fell over (yet again), I thought I'd spare you the full horror.

*Yup, this morgue-white colour is the colour of my legs AFTER an application of fake tan. There is a reason why people can tell I am English just from looking at me.

Picture of the day: Naciemiento-Fergusson Road, Central Coast, California

I drove Naciemento-Fergusson Road, the pass over the top of the Santa Lucia Mountains, on Thursday. This is the view from the cloudline on the narrow, un guard-railed, heart-attack inducing road.

When the The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men Gang aft agley *

I try so hard to be efficient and organised, yet it doesn’t always quite work out that way. Take my cunning plan to mail my luggage ahead of me in two parcels to California. This would have been a brilliant idea - if it had worked. Sure one parcel arrived, but the other has gone astray, with the tracking number telling me only that the parcel was accepted for mailing in New York ten working days ago.

This evening it was updated to say my parcel was misrouted. GAH. To put it into perspective, my sister mailed me a package from London on the same day which took just four days to arrive in San Francisco. Shame on the United States Post Office for being so outrageously USELESS.

I was in too much of a packing whirl to write a list of what I packed in each parcel, so I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up the smaller one in SF to discover my fake tan, suntan lotion, hiking sweater, all my party dresses and a couple of good books.

Unfortunately, it would appear that I had mailed everything I needed for later on in my trip in LA in the big gone astray parcel: that’s most of my bras, all my smart summer shoes (including my YSL heels), another pair of jeans, a huge bottle of Frederic Fekkai conditioner, my stone leather Janet Collin handbag, evening bags, my pearl necklaces & the rest of my books. It’s been like playing bloody Kim's Game trying to remember what’s in there.

I’m presuming that the parcel will arrive in San Francisco eventually and, as I intend to drive back up there in a few weeks, it is not the end of the world to be without it all right now.

However, I do have a couple of very smart dinners & lunches in LA the week after next and I have just one pair of shoes that aren’t these, moccasins, flip flops or hiking boots. I am VERY loathe to spend real money on new shoes when I already have more lovely shoes than a girl has any right to own, and am on a shopping moratorium, so I had a quick squint at the Payless website and came up with these two super-cheap options.

To wear with this dress, I thought these would work ($12.99!!!!):



And to wear with my navy blue cotton short shorts, these espadrilles ($22.99):

What do you think internets?

* The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men
Gang aft agley,
An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

From: Robert Burns, To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough

Picture of the day: Hearst Castle fountain

Imagekind: Buying art on-line

It’s inevitable that spending time in San Francisco means that I will be talking tech stuff with my friends here. It’s a world over which I barely skate back in New York, so it’s fascinating to be directed to sites and technologies by people who really know what they are talking about.

Amongst the several websites that have been recommended to me I rather like Imagekind. Although I must admit to a vested interest as I have an artist friend, Tim Aldridge, lurking on there.

It works as a portal for any artist to sell prints of their work in any medium, be it photography, fine art or well, anything. They claim to be the world's fastest-growing art site, with over 750,000 high-quality images for sale, from over 50,000 domestic and international emerging and established artists. Imagekind make their money from myriad framing, glazing and paper options. Prints can be ordered in many sizes, and the site is emminently searchable by anything from artist name to the colour of the image.

But the reason I like it is from the artist's point of view, rather than as a consumer. In this climate it can be difficult to sell expensive canvases, so using Imagekind can make an artist's work available to the widest possible online audience, at a more affordable pricing structure.

Image: Butterfly by Tim Aldridge.
Print available to buy here

Tuesday: Time out for rain in Sausalito

Just in case you thought California was all sun, sun, sun...I awoke on Tuesday morning to pouring rain and swirling fog over the hills of the Marin Headlands.


I didn't sleep well - it may have had something to do with a raccoon climbing in through the open first floor window of my bedroom - and the rain wasn't conducive to sightseeing, so I spent another day in Sausalito library working. I've learnt not to expect either cellphone coverage or internet access in this part of California (at least not in the remote places I choose to stay), so I am taking the opportunity to get some serious work done before I head back down the PCH to Big Sur.

A Tiger In The Kitchen: My Year of Eating Ferociously

From the moment I arrived in South East Asia aged nineteen, I didn't stop eating and could happily spend the entire day eating from all the different food carts in the Singapore hawker centres. Then I needed to learn how to cook laksa and roti canai and all the rest, so headed to the kitchens of the childrens homes in Singapore and in Malaysia where I volunteered. Leaning over the shoulders of the long-suffering chefs, I stuck spoons in soups and asked hundreds of questions

Cheryl Tan, an old fashion writer colleague of mine in New York, grew up in Singapore, & is similarly obsessive about the food of her youth. And, also like me, spends her time in New York eating her way around the city's restaurants and cooking up a storm at home.

She's just started up her first blog A Tiger In The Kitchen: My Year of Eating Ferociously where she intends to document her food adventures. She writes beautifully, so do go take a look.

Monday: Marin Headlands

Monday night: I’m sitting in the vast, high ceilinged living room of the Hi-Marin Headlands hostel, situated in a National Park, just a few miles from the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s a white clapboard building, whose provenance as historic accommodation for Fort Barry officers is apparent in the regular shaped rooms and long, low exterior.

The sky is fading to a translucent petrol blue outside and, through the long black cross-barred windows, framed by undrawn floor length, white linen curtains, I can see the silhouettes of the towering trees outside. There are lambent yellow glass pendant shades hanging on iron chains from the ceiling, and pleated calico shaded standard lamps are pooling light in the corners of the room.

I am curled up in a corner on a wide, squashy olive slub cotton covered sofa, The Cure’s Disintegration album is playing through my laptop headphones, and there is a paper bag of chocolate chip cookies just within reach.

I could sit writing here for hours.

Sunday: Marin Headlands

Sunday. After an indulgent brunch with lovely L, I spent the afternoon in Mill Valley, Marin County, just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, catching up on ten years’ worth of gossip with D, an old friend from England, who now lives here with his beautiful wife and S & J, their two fabulously entertaining children.

I was supposed to be staying at the Ritz-Carlton San Francisco Sunday & Monday but, with my head in pieces from jetlag, a blown up car engine and the pressure of navigating myself through many hundreds of miles of driving, I managed to give them the dates of next weekend when I am in Venice Beach with JK, not this one.

Not my cleverest move ever. I was in two minds about what to do instead. It was 7pm, & my choices were narrowed: everywhere I tried was full & I didn’t want to harass any of my friends in the City late on a Sunday night.

So I decided to give the glitzy hotels a miss this time, & headed back to the Golden Gate Bridge, over which I had driven only half an hour before, and booked myself into the HI Marin Headlands hostel. It’s reached through a long, narrow single-lane tunnel and then a twisting drive through bright green hills on the very edge of San Francisco Bay. It’s only a few miles, and twenty minutes from San Francisco itself, yet surrounded by rolling hills, upon which deer graze. It’s hard to compute that we could be so close to an enormous city.


I did intend to move location on Monday, but there’s no internet access or Blackberry coverage at the hostel which meant that I spent the entire day writing and playing catch up on email at Sausalito library just down the road. It was so late by the time I finished that it made sense just to check back in again, before heading back over the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco on Tuesday.

Saturday. San Francisco.

I’m staying with my darling A’s older sister lovely L whilst I am in San Francisco. She & B, (away with their daughter for Spring Break), live in beautiful Noe Valley on the south side of the city, full of Victorian clapboard and pastel painted houses. It’s lovely to get a chance to spend time with L, whom I have always liked very much on her visits to England, and I’m thrilled to get a chance to hang with her properly.

We can barely speak on Saturday morning after the shenanigans of the night before, so L’s friend T drives us to Sunset for Vietnamese as stage one of the old people’s recovery programme. This is a good start but I am still feeling distinctly ropey. L opts for a chiropractic session, and T drops me off in Golden Gate Park at Herzog & De Meuron’s glorious De Young museum so that I can catch the final weekend of the Yves Saint Laurent retrospective.

I can’t say I particularly feel like battling through Saturday afternoon crowds of gawping museum goers, but I feel that my fashion editor credibility would be strongly impaired if I failed to see the exhibit while I had the opportunity. I’m glad I made the effort: the clothes are extraordinary and I suddenly realise from whence the influence came for my mother’s staggeringly chic Seventies and Eighties wardrobe.

It's just a shame that the show is badly muddled and there is barely any signage or captioning#. I presume that many of the embroideries are by Lesage, but there's no information beyond the barest details. They might just as well have plonked the mannequins in any old order and dumped the captioning for all the sense the show made as a uniform whole.

I’m very happy to leave fashion behind and go back to Noe Valley for a restorative nap. Later, along with D, our (female) partner in crime from the night before, we do manage to drag our sorry asses into town for the Battle of the Bay stand-up quarter-finals to see their friend Sheila wipe the floor with her competitors. We eschew the after-party and crawl home (not before I manage to mislay the valet parking ticket).

Liberty London Girl news: Inclusion in The Online Fashion 100

Well, this is exciting! I've just received an email to say that Liberty London Girl has been included as one of just four independent bloggers in The Online Fashion 100, an ebook list of the 100 most inspirational, interesting and influential people behind the UK's online fashion industry, which is featured today in The Independent (UK).

Vogue.co.uk describes it thus: "The Online Fashion 100 features entrepreneurs, bloggers, marketers, photographers, ecommerce managers and the most powerful online editors working today"

I do feel a bit of a fraud being on a UK fashion list as, although I am a gen-u-wine fashion editor & writer, since LLG started up in 2007, it has always strayed from the fashion path, being a repository for my thoughts on everything from food to hotel reviews as well as giving a window into the world of the fashion editor. And, of course, although I am English through & through, I do live in America.

Still I'd like to give a big thank you to Leon Bailey Green who complied the list, and congratulations to the three other independent bloggers who have been included. It can be hard getting your voice heard as an independent blogger, and I am mighty proud to be keeping company with these superstars:
My beloved Queen Michelle of Kingdom of Style
Rebekah Roy of Stylist Stuff
The UK's biggest supporter of emerging designers: Susannah Lau of Style Bubble

San Francisco. Friday: Recapturing My Lost Youth

I am a few days behind with my California adventures: most of the places in which I stay do not have Wi-Fi or Blackberry coverage, which means I am playing catch up with writing & posting most days.

So, San Francisco. Friday.
I first visited the city when I was nineteen with my best friend Caz. We landed from Hawaii on the last leg of our round the world GAP year trip, and spent several days here before embarking on a Greyhound odyssey which would see us finally end up in New York before flying home. I remember a little of that stay: vintage shopping in the Haight & buying a Technicolor striped top that I wore with black cycling shorts and which made me look like an angry wasp on acid (but which I thought the absolute dernier cri), the obligatory walk over the Golden Gate Bridge and a particularly grotty hostel somewhere Downtown.

I came back again a few years later in 1994 for an extended summer under the auspices of BUNAC, who arranged a J-1 working visa for me. I got my first bylines writing about the San Francisco music scene on a long since defunct arts newspaper, & maitre d’ed extremely badly at Ariana, a very upmarket fine dining restaurant which promptly folded owing me all my wages. It probably didn’t help that the barman slipped me a shot of tequila every time I walked back from seating guests. I loved it here so much that I considered sacking my final year of university and staying here permanently.

My father talked sense into me, and I returned to England. Fifteen years later, I’m back in San Francisco again and, within eight hours of my arrival on Friday afternoon, I find myself rapidly cycling back through the years at a warehouse party on Potrero Hill. From the sheets of cardboard gaffer taped over the concrete floors and the slightly ropey visuals projected on the walls, to the thump thump of the techno and the slightly glazed look on the shuffling dancers’ faces I might as well be in 1994 again.

Four cocktails to the good, I bounce straight onto the dance floor with unabashed glee. And then burst into tears. It just all feels so heartbreakingly, unbearably nostalgic. Every time I look around the room I expect to see the faces of all my friends, not just those I hung out with here in San Francisco fifteen years ago, but all my beloved English friends, with whom I have danced at parties, raves, weddings and festivals, in clubs, squats, fields, warehouses, forest clearings, beaches and hangars from Newcastle and Leeds to Berlin and Barcelona. I realise those days are long, long behind me. Fortunately my swishing hair hides my face as I continue to dance and to cry.

Then I find myself kissing D$, one of L’s rather good-looking male friends and am cheered up immensely.

I do not feel very well the next day. At all. It becomes abundantly clear that the main difference between me in 1994 and me in 2009 is a lack of party stamina. My legs ache from toe to thigh from dancing in platform wedges on a concrete floor, rather in than the Ellesse trainers which were standard party gear back in the day, and just four or five drinks is enough to have induced a whole tribe of pixie blacksmiths to have taken up residence in my cranium.

Moxsie: a new on-line home for independent designers

I’m not the slightest bit surprised that the only area of retail growth right now is on the internet. I buy everything I can on-line. In fact, on-line shopping could have been designed specifically with the procrastinating freelancer in mind, the one who prefers to spend her hours playing on the internets, rather than constructively pitching stories and doing paperwork.

I did most of my shopping for this trip on-line. From the sleeping bag I needed for a story in Big Sur and my California guidebooks, through to the pepper spray I promised my mother I would buy and my new summer shoes, it all arrived blissfully at my front door, cheaper than in any real world shops and requiring no outdoors action on my part.

My latest discovery from my hours of, um, research, is on-line fashion retailer Moxsie. I’m fed up with logos and brand names; I want to support younger, independent designers, who think carefully about how their clothes are made and whose quality of make matches up to the quality of their designs. Which is why Moxsie appeals: they only sell product from independent clothing, jewelry, accessory and shoe designers.

I’m rather liking these elegant and simple sunglasses by Cassius eyewear, from New Zealand based designer Jason Ng. He launched the label in August 2008, naming each limited edition (300 in each style) design after an architect. They’ve got proper scratch-resistant, UV400 lenses and make a pleasant change from over-priced, logo’d up sunnies. These are the Pawson frames:


These are the Corbu:

I particularly like that, in addition to supporting independent designers, Moxsie donate a portion of its proceeds from each purchase to a charity, chosen by the shopper from a list including The Hunger Project, Dress for Success & Save The Children.

Eating in San Francisco

I daren’t go into The Shops right now: I’m blowing all my funds on my Big Trip out West and there’s certainly no cash left over for feeding my book, shoe and cooking equipment habits. Usually this means I promptly console myself by buying lots of delicious food, trying to con myself that, as I am being so abstemious elsewhere and that food is a necessity, a leetle extra in the shopping basket from somewhere delicious won’t make much of a dent in my budget.

Oh look, there’s a pink pig flying across the sky.

Anyway, being on the road for the last week, broke as usual, & away from my usual gourmet food pushers, means I’ve been subsisting on chips/crisps, veggieburgers, emergency cookies (which I keep stashed under the passenger seat so I can only reach them if I am stopped in traffic, of which there is bugger all), bad Chinese and oranges. This has not made me enormously happy.

So I cannot express just how excited I was to see San Francisco glimmer in the distance on Friday afternoon, after a punishing five hour trip up from the bottom end of Big Sur. I wasn’t excited because I was dying for the loo, or because I thought my right knee might be permanently locked at 135˚ for having sat at a steady 65mph the whole way, but because I was heading for a city with restaurants that didn’t serve their entire menu encased in bread rolls.

Yup, I spent the weekend with my head face down in the trough, feeding and being fed. I will glaze over the food at Supperclub on Friday night which was Not Good, (oh, but I must mention the fruit pudding which was served in a dog bowl, with latex gloves to scoop it up. This was not sexy/funny, merely contrived and irritating), and head straight to Saturday’s very deep fried spring Vietnamese spring rolls & hoi sin sauce in Sunset, which mopped up my alcohol abuse of the night before.

We closed the day with quintessential San Francisco sandwiches, eaten on the hoof, ( couldn’t help comparing to the London corner shop version which would have been sweaty cheese and pickle in a plastic triangle box),

followed a few hours later by pulling small dishes of deliciousness off the sushi conveyor belt at Sushi Boat Downtown.

Sunday morning won out with the best brunch I’ve eaten this year. Savor in Noe Valley dished up an enormous textbook omelette filled with veg chorizo, black bean chili, huge chunks of avocado and jack cheese, served with crispy, crunchy home fries and the freshest, softest sourdough, slathered in butter, which we ate outside on their patio in the unexpected 65F heat. I dream of food like that. Especially at $9.95 for the lot.

Savor, 3913 24th Street at Sanchez. Tel: 415-282-0344

Elephant Seal Beach. Central Coast, California (More gratuitous animal action)

Elephant Seal Beach. My guidebook didn't make much of it, and I only stopped at the Vista Point/Elephant Seal sign because I can’t concentrate on driving if I have a sandwich screaming 'EAT ME’ from the passenger seat. My usual experience with spotting seals, whales, dolphins etc is not spotting them. Everyone else around me gets their cute sea creature porn fix and I am left staring blankly at the water, mistaking seaweed for flippers.

I parked up, grabbed my binoculars and actually managed to spot some frolicking seal action out on the rocks. Amazed, I watched for a few minutes, and then prepared to hop back in the car and off up the road. Before I could drive off, a docent knocked on my car window and asked if I had visited the far ends of the beach. Apparently I wouldn't regret it. So, not wanting to offend the septuagenarian guide, I hauled my lazy ass out the nice warm car in to the stiff breeze (howling gale) and realised that this (which I had squinted at, and written off as rocks),

was actually this:


Prepare yourself for outrageous anthropomorphism:




It gets better:

Check out the two in the background:






I know exactly how they feel.

Hello again: Catch up post, with gratuitous cute squirrel action

One of the things that I hadn’t legislated for on this trip would be periods of complete absence of internet access and cellphone coverage, caused both by driving and staying in very mountainous areas. So many apologies for the blog silence since Friday. I was also a little distracted by partying at the weekend. Then, to my gobsmacked horror, I discovered that my accommodation on the Marin Headlands last night was Wi-Fi & cellphone free.

So: back to the trip. When I last blogged I was still in the Best Western motel in San Simeon, on an enforced break from driving due to my car being stranded fourteen miles up in the road with a blown up engine in the arse end of nowhere. The rental agency delivered a replacement Friday morning (a faster, newer, shiner replacement, so some silver lining there), and I spent the morning trapped in a Groundhog Day.

I woke up just ten miles from where I started Thursday; my lunch was from Sebastian’s again,

& I ate it at the same vista point en route. Although this time I parked myself by this sign:


And had an audience watching every mouthful:




I’m still rather miffed that the car debacle lost me so much of my exploring agenda. My schedule wasn’t particularly packed, but we had dinner reservations in San Francisco on Friday night, so my enforced overnight in San Simeon meant that I had to spend most of Friday driving the mental coastal roads to get to the city on time. So, not only did I have to cancel my stay in Big Sur on Thursday, I also missed out on visiting the Monterey Aquarium, Santa Cruz & Carmel.

This means I’ve cancelled my plans to visit Calistoga, and am heading back down South as soon as possible, retracing my route back to Big Sur. Depending on whether I love or loathe Los Angeles, I’m hoping to revisit the Bay Area and Northern California at the end of the month instead.

Why can't five star hotels get it right when a California Best Western can?

I’m fed up with staying in five star hotels that ignore the basics and charge the earth for extras. Take Rome’s EUR600 a night Hotel de Russie which charges for DVD player rental or the Grand et Milan which has closets the size of gym lockers and charges EUR6 for a small bottle of water.

I know I wasn’t supposed to be reviewing the Best Western where I stayed last night, especially when they gave me a swanky upgrade because they found out for whom I write, but I was so impressed with the bells & whistles they throw in just because, and which some of the best hotels in the world don’t consider necessary, that I can’t resist giving them an extra shout out.

The bathroom. They provide everything from make-up remover wipes & nail varnish remover pads to hair conditioner (even the smartest hotels seem to forget that most women use conditioner as well as shampoo), thick towelling bath robes that reach to the feet (I’m 5’6”), rather than stopping at the knee, & plenty of towels and flannels (but with an eco laundry policy).

The room itself. All these were present and correct: a four cup filter coffee machine with real & decaf, a mini bar that charges shop prices (and includes gummy bears, family size packs of chocolate chip cookies and Laughing Cow cheese), padded coat hangers as well as wooden ones that aren’t perma attached to the rail, two collapsible luggage stands (the norm is one), the biggest safe I’ve seen in a hotel: large enough for a generous handbag and more, a real hairdryer – not a beige one attached to the wall wafting air, a whole set of closet drawers rather than annoying cubby holes for your clothes, a DVD player, a proper alarm clock, an Ethernet cable (as opposed to assuming you have your own for when the Wi-FI isn’t working) and an eiderdown AND a duvet for extra squishy comfiness in bed.

These things are not rocket science. Why then do I have to be amazed that a motel franchise in California gets it?

Libertylondongirl Flickr account

Lots of photos on a blog can be a pain in the neck as they slow down load times, and the narrow page format means the layout is clunky. So, I've opened an LLG Flickr account so you can see photos from behind the scenes of the stories that I post, as well some from stories that are yet to come like this photo of Hearst Castle as the fog rolled in, and this house in its neighbouring village, San Simeon, with the Castle perched on the hill behind it.

They don't make sandwiches like this where I come from

This is Sebastian's, a Historical Monument/grocery store in San Simenon.

This is Sebastian's from round the corner, so you can get the full American clapboard glory.

This is how my $6.95 take out veggie sandwich from Sebastian's arrived. I needed two hands to carry it.


This was enough for lunch and for supper.

The part where it all starts to go badly wrong (plus: The Kindness of Strangers)

You know that entry on my blog where I was banging away about karma and everything going to plan? Well, here’s my advice - don’t do that, not never, because the next day your car will break down in the arse end of nowhere, with no cellphone coverage, just fourteen miles from the place you are supposed to be reviewing for a national newspaper.

Yup, that’s right folks. It’s called karmic retribution.

The day started so well. Marmite & buttered toast and a little light internets action at my New Favourite Hostel in Cambria, followed by the dubious glories of Hearst Castle, and a delicious sandwich from Sebastian’s in San Simeon village, so big it would have fed a small family comfortably. Then we had a lot of basking seal action en route and, just as I was thinking: this car is fantastic, but the whole Pacific Coast Highway Experience ™ would be greatly improved by a motor with a bit more torque, the fan started screaming & the temperature gauge shot to red. More karmic retribution. I hope you are all paying attention to this cautionary tale.

Bitter experience tells me that this is the bit where you stop immediately before the car blows up. Upon examination, the radiator was so hot I could have made toast on it. Then the battery died.

Splendid.

Stuck out on an open coast road with minimal traffic, and nothing but surf and mountains around me – and no cell coverage. Just as I was about to send out a distress signal on my GPS unit (resourceful, me), a car pulled over and my very own Good Samaritans came into play. Ed and & his wife Deanna scooped me up, drove me & my laptop (can’t bear to be parted) to San Simeon, called the rental company for me and made sure the motel where they were staying could put me up. I’d like to take the opportunity to rain down copious blessings upon them both.

Especially for dropping me off at the Best Western Cavalier motel on the side of Highway One in San Simeon. Not only did my NBF Carlos and his staff let me use the house phone again and again, & play on their internets whilst hanging out in the lobby looking a bit scary bird and fulminating against useless car rental companies, but they did this all before the rental agency confirmed they would pay for my room there. And then, when the agency quibbled about the cost, he gave me a special English-Girl-Broken-Down-in-Car room rate (I quote).

And then his wonderful colleague Lu who had clocked that I was a writer promptly upgraded me to a gigantic ocean view room (I cld swing a whole family of cats in here), with an obscene bath (to calm me down she said), squishy duvet and huge bed that is so wasted on just me. (Seven pillows, seven!) I can hear the surf breaking through the French windows and Carlos has promised me ocean whale action. There are super powerful binoculars in my room but all I’ve spotted so far are the insane kite surfers whooping and wheeling in the surf.


It’s a little chilly but I have a working fireplace, some Merlot and there are strategic fire-pits all along the property’s ocean wall for nighttime wine drinking, whale spotting and general hanging out. S’funny: I’ve never even considered staying at a Best Western (darling), but this place really does put the oh! in motel.

The joys of hostelling in America

When I was nineteen, I Greyhound-ed around America with my best friend Caz. We really did see it all as far as hostel accommodation in this country was concerned. From a waterbed mattress in a bunk bed in Austin to gen-u-wine teepees in Truth & Consequences, there was no hostel experience we left unplumbed.

Now that I am a grown up, I don’t need to stay in hostels very often. Most usually I travel for business (fashion weeks or location shoots) or for work (reviewing hotels or writing travel pieces), so I get put up in some wonderful, spoiling places.

However, when I’m travelling around on my own for pleasure, (as opposed to taking a holiday to a fixed destination) I work on the principle that, as I’ll be exploring all day and eating out in the evening, all I need is a bed and a shower in the cheapest possible place. (After all it’s not like I have the luxury of splitting the cost of a double room with someone.) I like hostels: they tend to have free Wi-Fi & breakfast, kitchens for guests to use, on-site parking and are usually situated somewhere particularly convenient.

In Santa Barbara the only viable choice was an independent backpacker’s hostel down near the waterfront. I can’t in all honesty recommend it, even at a bargain $22 a night. They can’t be held responsible for the snoring Germans in the next door bunks or the irritating conspiracy theorists loudly pontificating in the common area, but the cramped dorm rooms, dubious blankets, loos with curtains not doors, unrenovated bathrooms and general feeling of staying in a travellers’ sausage facility can be laid firmly at their door.

Fortunately the hosts were relentlessly cheery and incredibly helpful: they even let me sit outside the front door in the sunshine to use their internet connection after they shut up for the day. (Hostels are generally shut between 12 & 5pm to guests.

In contrast, the official Hostelling International set-up in Cambria is an independent traveller’s wet dream. A 110-year old white painted clapboard house, it was originally a parsonage for the church next door. The dorm has just three beds ($27 pn), each with a floor length white linen privacy curtain, and made up (as opposed to having an armful of crumpled linen thrust at you at reception) with china blue & white sheets and beige fleece blankets. It’s actually chic; a word never before used in association with the word ‘hostel’. Best of it has individual reading lights, so no having my sleep patterns subordinated to snoring German tourists. (Last night I was reduced to tweeting Belgian Waffling from underneath my smelly blankets so the light from my cell screen wldn’t wake them up.)

All going according to plan - so far...

I drove 350 miles from LAX via Santa Barbara to Cambria yesterday & today in a state of suspended bliss. Sunshine! Hairpin bends! The ocean! Mountain passes! More exciting things requiring more exclamation marks than a writer should care to use. Tomorrow I'm preparing to be astonished, repulsed and generally gob-smacked by Hearst Castle, before heading on up to Big Sur.

Everything is slotting into place like a great big karmic jigsaw. Even the few hitches have been dealable with. I haven’t even got properly lost yet (although I did nearly turn onto the train tracks at the level crossing in Santa Barbara when the sat nav told me to make a right. Apparently it was the right after the station. Who knew?)

I liked Santa Barbara enormously. It’s like a ritzy colonial toytown: the town centre is filled with white adobe-style buildings, and the strolling evening passersby could just as easily be in Spain as in California. (Until, that is, you catch sight of the ubiquitous Subway, Old Navy, and Quiznos etc lurking behind the quaint store fronts.)

I had planned to explore more, but writing work kept me busy until after 2pm,so I only had time for a fleeting squint at the glorious 18thC Mission, before heading off to meet with a superlative winemaker at her place in the Santa Ynez valley. (Of which more later.)

Old Mission Santa Barbara

Darling JK arrives in Los Angeles from NY a week Friday and we will be exploring Southern California together for ten days, so it makes sense for me to head north as quickly as possible to check out the places that will be too far from our LA base. I’m working as well as playing, on assignment for various newspapers & magazines. Over the next week I’ll be in Monterey, San Francisco (staying at the Ritz Carlton), Marin County & Calistoga, before heading back down to Los Angeles. Any recommendations gratefully received...

California adventure:LAX to Santa Barbara

So, I left you as I was blow drying my hair in the airport bathroom. More fun & games ensued when I went through airport security: I’d love to know why a pot of Marmite is considered a security risk when they allowed my curling tongs in my hand baggage – which could be used heated up on an aircraft, as Virgin American have v civilized power sockets beneath the seats. Fortunately I always travel with two pots of Marmite, so disaster has been averted.

At LAX, was astonished to see my 70lb suitcase was first off the carousel. However I’d like to say a big F**K you to the gentleman in skinny jeans to my left, who watched without helping as I lugged it off the conveyor belt, dropped it on my feet, tripped and fell sprawling across it. I dazzle myself with my grace and elegance, really I do.

I’m happy to say though that everything perked up from then on in. Lovely Kevin at Atwest Car Rental managed to find me at the terminal, although upon reflection it wasn’t that hard to spot the lost-looking blonde head to toe in very un-LA black perched precariously on top of a pile of luggage (black) on the curbside. He upgraded me to a Chevy Aveo, so white that I almost got snow blindness checking it for scratches. It may not be a glamorous set of wheels, but I learnt my lesson in Miami last time I rented a convertible: it was so hot that we sizzled like bacon on a griddle whenever we lowered the roof.

I’ve never used Sat Nav before, (I’m generally a holding the map upside down at the wheel kind of navigator), but my shiny new Tom Tom One got me on to the 405 like a dream. Unfortunately I hadn’t computed that it would take the most direct route, not the prettiest. After sitting in rush hour traffic for 45 minutes, I naughtily re-programmed it with one hand on the steering wheel to divert via Santa Monica, Malibu and the coast road to Santa Barbara.

There was a moment where I drove through a tunnel on the freeway and exited to a blinding vista of sunlight, ocean and mountain, which rammed home that I was no longer in Kansas. The scenery on the two hour drive runs from the back of staggering beach houses backed on to the road in Malibu to vertical rock faces on the right. At points the ocean drops off sharply to the left and at others wide swathes of beach and clapboard coastguard stations entice the traveller to stop the car to run screaming with joy onto the sand. (I didn’t – this time anyway). Further on, at Oxnard, the right hand side mountain vista fades out to acres of green agriculture and signs offering cheap strawberries and flowers.

I made it to Santa Barbara as the sun was setting and ate my bodyweight in supper.

More later.

How I nearly missed the sodding plane

Well, it’s idiot o’clock as far as my body is concerned, but 2225hrs according to the clock in the not immensely appealing 24hr coffee shop in Santa Barbara where I am swigging Earl Grey in an attempt to retain some essential English-ness in the face of relentless Californian laid back charm.

If points were to be handed out for efficiency, punctuality & organisation, then I achieved nul points this morning. I was deep in a particularly splendid dream which I seem to remember involved whippets, cooking and driving very fast ( three of my all time favourite things) when my flat mate woke me, concerned that it was 8am and I was still a snoozing ball under the duvet.

The utterly bloody alarm on my Blackberry hadn’t gone off at 0630hrs as set, so I was left with an hour to bicycle to my storage container, drop off an envelope at Soho House, shower, finish packing, clean my room & throw my 70lbs of luggage down five flights of stairs. Not ideal, all things considering.

Anyway, I did it. Within my allotted hour too. I do feel rather sorry for all the pedestrians that I nearly mowed down on my bike as, fresh from the shower, I sprinted the wrong way down the Ninth Avenue bike path to Manhattan Mini Storage, hair spraying water like an enthusiastic puppy.

But then I got the fear about how long it would take to get to the airport and blew my economy plans by throwing $50 on a cab to JFK. Still, I made it. Even if I did have to blow dry & curl my hair in the bathroom at Terminal Four. Glamour, glamour, glamour: that’s all my life is.