Birthday in Central California
It’s my birthday month!! We decided to head to the California Coast and visit Solvang, Pismo Beach, and Morro Bay for a long weekend.
While we have done this trip many times, we were finally able to bring my parents along. Plus we didn’t have a blog back then, so now we get to share all of our favorite places with you too!
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Table of Contents
Solvang
After work on Thursday, we hit the road for our 7-ish hour drive from Phoenix to Santa Barbara. The plan was to get to the airport in time to pick up my parents and then finish the drive to Solvang.
Lucky for us we didn’t hit any traffic, the bad news is we ended up being there 2 hours early! Thankfully Santa Barbara had an In-and-Out so we hung out there. We were shocked at how busy that place was for 10 pm and it never seemed to let up, yay for outside seating and a warming evening in California.
Pickup was smooth, and we were on our way to The Hadsten Solvang (website here). While it was late and we didn’t get to fully appreciate this hotel until later in the weekend, we LOVED this hotel! It’s at a great location to walk downtown, with amazing service, and fantastic rooms.
Once we got some much-needed sleep, it was time to explore Solvang!
For those who may not be familiar, Solvang is an adorable Danish town with California wine country mixed in. You can spend an entire day walking through all the shops and stopping for food, snacks, and wine throughout.
We started with breakfast at Solvang Restaurant (website here). While we often choose Red Viking, they weren’t as accommodating for my diet so we tried somewhere new. They had a good eggs benedict and a must-try solving breakfast item – aebleskivers!
After breakfast, we began our walk through town enjoying everything there was to see. We stopped at Danish Mill Bakery for a slice of Danish Kringle, which was my mom’s favorite.
Now before we get to the first wine tasting… quick shout out to Royal Oaks! They were my favorite fruit wine shop in town, but sadly they are going through some changes are are currently closed. With my current diet, I can’t have the fruit anyway, but it was sad not to be able to show my parents their shop.
Instead, we stumbled on a new fruit wine shop, and it was just as good!
Twenty Mile Winery had multiple fruit wines with Peach, Olallieberry, and Triple Berry being the favorites of the group.
The staff was a lot of fun, and they had a good lounge area to enjoy your tastings.
Plus they offered olive oil tastings as well, which was a fun addition to the wine tasting.
Now that everyone was relaxed and happy after a few glasses of wine, it was time for more food!
Mortenson’s Bakery is one of Nathan’s childhood favorites, so we had to stop and get the giant Boston Creme for him to enjoy.
After enjoying some pastries we continued our walk, visiting one of my favorites the Solvang Oil Press which has dozens of self-serve tastings for olive oil and balsamic vinegar which add amazing flavors to everyday dishes!
As we explored, we found a new place (to us) called Cailloux which had cheese tastings along with a wine selection. We decided to get a cheese platter and I found a new favorite called, Alp Blossom, and Nathan was surprised how much he enjoyed the Brie.
One of our last stops in Solvang was at another new place (to us) called Toccata. That is one of the best parts of Solvang, there is always something new to find even if you have visited before!
We also struggled with many of the wineries as red and dry wines are much more popular in this area and myself and family enjoy sweet wines. Twenty Mile was unique with fruit wines and Toccata was the only place we found multiple Moscato’s to try.
The Santa Barbara ended up being our favorite and we bought a few bottles and enjoyed one at the hotel patio area. We also liked the Late Harvest, which was closer to a dessert wine, and bought a bottle of that as well.
Having plenty of treats and wine, we went over to Firestone Walker Brewing for dinner and then called it a night!
Pismo Beach / Morro Bay
On Saturday we hit the road to drive up to Pismo Beach and get another favorite food.
Old West Cinnamon Rolls (website here) has the BEST cinnamon rolls we have ever had. Ever! You get to choose between original, maple bacon with icing, cream cheese, and a few other flavors. They are even big enough to share, not that you would want too 😉.
Everyone else ate them so fast I didn’t even have a chance to get a picture to share!
I knew this would be a rough one to miss out on, not only was it my actual birthday but I love cinnamon rolls. So I brought some gluten-free donuts to make sure I could have a good treat but was still sad to miss out.
After a delicious breakfast, we walked down to the pier and beach. Nathan absolutely loved all the fog and it kept coming in and out so we would go from gloomy to bright blue sky every 10-15 minutes.
The pier was a beautiful walk and I highly recommend this beach if you want to hang out somewhere for the day.
After Pismo Beach, we drove a few minutes over to Morro Bay.
We stopped by Morro Rock first and the fog continued to play fun tricks. You couldn’t see the rock until you were right next to it!
My parents took a walk down the beach and we sat up next to a fire that someone had started in the designated firepits.
I will note that being out in the morning and on the coast meant it was quite chilly! You can call me an Arizonian but I kept my jacket on most of the morning.
Next up was another favorite for Nathan, clam chowder at Giovanni’s! Since we were in Boston about a year ago, it was a perfect time to confirm that Giovanni’s is better than any clam chowder he got there.
Morro Bay has a good downtown to walk down with shops and places to eat and snack so we spent some time walking through town.
There was a super cool tree with little poof-ball flowers.
Then walked through the Shell Shop, a classic store with tons of shells from all over the world.
Last, but not least, we found some little crabs hanging out on the rocks!
Remaining Trip
We made our way back home stopping at our last favorite restaurant in Lompoc, Tom’s (website here). They have a burger for every letter of the alphabet and are a great diner-like place.
Our afternoon was done much earlier than expected so we decided to hang out at the hotel patio.
The bottle of wine from Toccato Santa Barbara was delicious and then we tried a variety of drinks the bar offered, all of which tasted great and looked amazing!
We played some cornhole and had some dinner while hanging out. Another shout out to the hotel for being amazing at accommodating my diet. They went as far as pulling potatoes prepped for breakfast and making me country potatoes with no seasoning so I could have something instead of their breaded fries.
Once the patio started to get more families coming out, we decided it was time to get to bed early since we had to leave by 4 am to my parents to the airport on time.
Leaving at 4 am meant that we were home by noon and had absolutely zero traffic, which is truly amazing since the freeway from California to Phoenix is always packed on a Sunday with people coming home from their weekend.
We had another fantastic trip and weekend and can’t wait for our next visit to our favorite coast!
Tubing down the Salt River
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