Santa Barbara, Solvang, Buellton and Los Olivos Weekend

We haven't posted in a while but I figure I'll start with last weekend and hopefully get to this past weekend tomorrow. Last weekend we ventured about 105 miles North of Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, Solvang, Buellton and Los Olivos for some site seeing and wine tasting.

We headed out on Friday afternoon. Shortly after making our way up the Pacific Coast Highways, Russ and I decided to stop so that we could soak in the last rays of sunshine and watch the surfers across from Neptunes Restaurant. We arrived in Santa Barbara around 7:00 pm and checked into the cute Montecito Inn (no we didn't run into Oprah - - she lives down the road ha ha). After dropping off our bags, we ventured out into the cute town and finally found excellent Indian Food on the main drag. It's surprising how difficult it has been to find Indian food in LA! The next morning, we jumped on the hotel's cute beach cruisers and made our way down to the beach and took a nice ride along the scenic coast. We decided that we'd love to live in Santa Barbara one day, preferably in a big beautiful house on the beach :)

Beautiful little flowers along the beach

Later that afternoon, we met up with the Hill's in Solvang, an adorable Danish town about 25 miles from Santa Barbara. It is always fun when we are with the Hill's! We enjoyed beers and Brats and then it was off to Buellton and Los Olivos. All of these towns are adorable. So much character, cute shops and tons of wine tasting rooms. Unfortunately, we missed the last of the tastings but made up for it at Matt's Tavern. To make the day even more perfect, we ended up being on the receiving end of left over cupcakes from Enjoy Cupcakes ! The owner came out and gave us a whole pan of gourmet cupcakes because she was closing up her shop for the evening -- who doesn't like FREE cupcakes! They were delicious.

Beers & Brats in Solvang

We made our way up to the top of Mount Figueroa where we set up camp and made a fire. We even enjoyed the thoughtful bottle of wine given to us by the Abo's with a special poem asking us to be Godparents on the back of it..ahhhh (I had to take a photo to commemorate the special occassion).

Delicious Washington Wine...In the Santa Ynez Valley of all places - -we miss the Abo's

I love this photo (I wish it were more clear but it's cute)

We parted ways with the Hill's on Sunday and Russ and I hit up Gainey Winery for a tasting and then headed home. We loved the Chardonay and Pinot Grigio but weren't crazy about the Syrah...maybe it was the 80 degree weather? All in all, it was a quick trip that was full of adorable sites. We'd highly recommend it to anyone looking to get out of LA for a quick little getaway. Before you go, be sure to watch Sideways again so you can check out all of the little places in the movie. We watched it afterwards, which was fun too. We hope to do a similar trip in about a month for our 6 year anniversary! We'll see...

xo Ang n Russ