Day 5: we finally reach “vacation speed”

This morning we had a luxurious lie-in, as they say in England, sleeping in until 8am. Being girly-girls it took us two hours to get out the door after once again having breakfast of, you guessed it, hard boiled eggs and rice cakes with peanut butter, though at least we ate at a table like civilized people this time. It is amazingly, perfectly beautifully sunny and warm today—not a cloud in the sky. We drove first to a little Dutch village called Solvang. We were pleasantly surprised to learn they were having a festival called Danish Days today. We wondered through the town to see,, tranditional dancing (see video) and many people in Viking costumes, including this lovely gentleman who graciously posed for the above picture with us. Sabrina got to hold his axe, and he provided the charming hats. We also saw some amazing chainsaw wood carvings, including this lovely nome and eagles. On the way out of town, we also passed an ostrich farm but they charged $4 to take a picture so you’ll just have to use your imagination.

On we drove to Santa Barbara, one of Sabrina’s favorite places in the entire world. We decided to just hang out there for the afternoon, to avoid the worst of LA traffic. We sauntered casually up and down the main street of town and in and out of little shops. We found a fabulous restaurant called The Natural Cafe where we dined on dairy free nachos (still good, I swear) and salad with carrot-beet-celery juice on the side. It was delicious and surpisingly way too much food even though we were both starving when we got there. We spent several hours just walking slowly around Santa Barbara, and absorbing some much needed vitamin D. We also took a tour through the art museum, where they had an exhibition of old Hollywood photography and some Picassos. Afterwards, we headed back to our new favorite restaurant, where we had spotted a vegan, gluten-free brownie earlier, which was approximately the size of a human baby’s head, which we shared it it was delicious—and turned out to be dinner. It was a very enjoyable afternoon, and definitely our best so far.

We left SB at around 6, hoping to get to Malibu before sunset, but we got stuck behind some excruciatingly slow motorcycles and realized that was not going to happen. So instead, we pulled off at Ventura and watched the sunset from the beach. It was lovely to put our toes in the sand, even if we were somewhat distracted by a desperate need to pee, with all of the park bathrooms locked up for the night. Thankfully we found a nearby gas station quickly.

Tonight we will stay with Laura’s childhood friend Stephanie in Los Angeles, and once again try and pack too many things in one day tomorrow before heading off to San Diego.