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Le Colonial Vietnamese Restaurant

For our final night, Vaiva wanted to try a Vietnamese restaurant. When we lived in New Haven the Vietnamese restaurant in Branford was one of our favorites. She had me call The Slanted Door for a reservation, but they were all booked up.

So I called Le Colonial, and they had a table for us. This was the better choice anyway, because they were within walking distance of our hotel.

We dressed in our best duds for the occasion, and I took a photo of us in the mirror. The photo at the top of the blog is another taken at the same time.

The restaurant did not disappoint, it was one of the finest dining experiences of my life. Vaiva and I narrowed our selection down to two choices, and as happened so often we had the same idea, so I got one and she got the other. I don't remember any other details, except that we were very happy.

The roof top garden at the Orchard Garden Hotel

This was another first-class hotel that Vaiva found for us. It was less than half a block to the entrance to Chinatown, and we spent an afternoon on that walk. I took photos there also, but she is not in any of them. Perhaps the most interesting parts of Chinatown were the stores catering to tourists, at the high end and the low end of affluence.

Alcatraz Island

That's it behind my right shoulder.

Ghirardelli Square

Our California sojourn ended in San Francisco. We took the cable car from our hotel, the Orchard Gardens, down to the port area--and let me tell you it wasn't easy to catch a cable car, they are way oversubscribed. We waited in line for an hour to get one for our return.

Big Basin

After Santa Cruz, we drove to Big Basin Redwoods State Park (website here), arriving later than we'd hoped, about 5:00 I think. The road was twisty, the driving slow. Still, we found a neat base area that had a short trail for novice hikers, one that even the slowest walker could complete in 45 minutes. That's just about how much time we had before dusk arrived in the forest.


After the hike we drove north on the narrow forest road, and because it was dark it was somewhat scary. Many places were too narrow for more than one vehicle.

Below is a living redwood whose center was burned out in a forest fire hundreds of years ago. The tree survives. If you stand where I am in the photo, you can look up through the hollow trunk to see the sky above.

Santa Cruz

After visiting Gilroy Gardens, Vaiva and I took a walk on the beach in Santa Cruz. Vaiva never missed a chance to go to the seashore.

More circus trees

There was more to Gilroy Gardens than these trees, but they were the most photogenic items.

Basket tree

Vaiva took this photo of me in front of the basket tree. Six separate sycamore trees were grafted together to make this oddity.

Circus trees

Vaivs's father included grafting fruit trees among his many horticultural hobbies. He had mixed success. Although the grafts often "took," they only rarely produced usable fruit.

Perhaps it was this exposure to Senelis' grafting efforts that caused Vaivs to include a visit to see the most remarkable specimens of grafted trees, possibly in human history. The story is here, as recounted in Wikipedia. It's consistent with what they said in the park.

In the photo above, four separate trees were bent in a curve and grafted together to a single trunk. All of the improbable trees in Gilroy Gardens were living. Some of the dead ones are in museums.

Gilroy Gardens

Have you ever heard of Gilroy Gardens, in Gilroy California? Me neither. But Vaiva had come across it in her researches for our trip.

Gilroy, California, is known as the Garlic Capital of the World. Will Rogers reportedly said that it was the only place you could marinate a steak by hanging it out on a clothesline, or something to that effect. Gilroy Gardens is the theme park located there, with amusement rides and a horticultural exhibits.

At right, Vaiva strolls through a garden. Below, the Tilt-a-whirl ride carriages are in the shape of garlic bulbs. The most noteworthy attraction of the Gardens, however, has to be the Circus Trees.

Relaxation

They had a hot tub and provided robes at the Tickled Pink Inn.

Tickled Pink

Because of the forest fires, we doubled back and drove through the interior of California to our next stop, Carmel, the city that once enjoyed having Clint Eastwood as its mayor. Again, we arrived rather late, with all the sight seeing Vaiva had packed into our day.

We stayed at the most luxurious place I've ever seen outside of Las Vegas, the Tickled Pink Inn. (Website here.) This is the kind of place that is so expensive they give you a bottle of champaigne on ice in your room upon your arrival. We had some trouble finding it, the GPS navigator seemed to take us in circles through the narrow, winding roads here. This was also confusing because the Inn is set among expensive coastal homes, not out on a major highway.




This is the view from our balconey.

Elephant seals

After we finished our tour of Heart Castle, Vaiva and I planned to head north, along the coast highway. As it happened, our way was blocked by the forest fires, so we drove about 30 miles on that highway along the seacoast, which was glorious, then doubled back.

Vaiva was on the lookout on that stretch of road for a place where elephant seals beach themselves, and we found it with no trouble. How did Vaiva know that it would be there? How did she know everything—it's the same question, with the same answer. She read voraciously.

Hearst Castle

Another nice thing about the Madonna Inn was free WiFi in the restaurant area. This was important to us because Vaiva thought we should visit the Hearst Castle (website here) as we traveled north. How does the WiFi come into the story? You can only get into the Castle by taking a group tour, and you should buy your tickets in advance for that, which can be done at their website. (Otherwise you may have to wait for hours, because the tours sell out regularly.) The tickets are for a specific tour (there are four different ones and an evening tour) and time. So we used the Nuvi to estimate our travel time, which was a couple hours as I recall, and picked our tour.

If you haven't been to the Hearst Castle yet, we strongly suggest you put it on your bucket list. The setting, the buildings, the furnishings are remarkable, our guide was outstanding, the story is beyond fiction. There is a very rich history which the guide skims for the group, pausing to answer in depth any questions that come up.

I took a bunch of photos, but the shots at their website are even better. However, they don't have this one:

Back to the Madonna Inn

We returned to the Madonna Inn for another night, and Vaiva had another swim the next morning.

Solvang

After the Mission Vaiva and I went to Solvang, a curious little tourist trap settled by Danes from Minnesota. Wikipedia entry here, tourist info and photos here. We took a long walk through the town, look at the odd landmarks and stores. Can you guess where we actually spent some cash? The used book store.

Vaiva plays a video game

This photo was from earlier in the California trip, when we were in Disneyland with Adrija.

Vaiva was not a fan of video games, I don't know if she ever played one, and if she did it would have been for only a minute or so. The Buzz Lightyear ride in Disneyland simulates being inside a video game, and the riders have "blasters" that they use to shoot "bad guys" as they move through the dark. The travel books said that adults and kids alike loved this ride, so we tried it. Once.

As with many of the attractions, Disney takes your digital photo during the ride and offers it to you for a fee as you exit. However, with the Buzz Lightyear ride they also give you the option to e-mail the photo to someone (or yourself, even better) at no charge. So I had the ladies wait while I searched for ours.

The surprise is not that Adrija and I won with a score of 14,600. The surprise, which I would not have believed with the photographic evidence, is that Vaiva (Space Ranger One) scored 2,400.

Visiting a mission

Vaiva loved to travel, and she loved to read travel books. (She was a voracious reader.) She planned a remarkable itinerary for our California sojourn.

After we breakfasted at the Madonna Inn, we explored San Luis Obispo. We visited one of the restored missions from the earliest settlement of California. I haven't yet found its name. I was a bit surprised that we had the entire place almost to ourselves.

Above, I'm standing near one of the fields, with the living quarters and chapel in the background. Below, inside the chapel.

The Madonna Inn

After Disneyland, after the Lithuanian Folk Dance Festival, after we spent a day on impulse with Liepa at Universal Studios, Vaiva and I drove all evening to San Luis Obispo. The Garmin Nuvi was an essential component of our California travels, and it was that night as well, driving after dark.

We stayed at the Madonna Inn (their home page is here). This obscure but charming hotel, recommended to us by both Tom Gerrity and Sam Heitzman, was built by a guy named Madonna in the 1950s. Every room is different, they have a dining room that looks like a Disney cartoon,


they have a lovely pool that Vaiva had all to herself,



and a gazebo with a garden and view of the countryside.