San Luis Obispo

The town of San Luis Obispo is also very pretty.  The Spanish influence on California had started to kick in, and the town was full in picturesque little buildings in the hacienda style.  There was also a pretty little mission house dating from the 18th century next to a stream.  We stopped and had a sandwich next to it, while listening to a Joni Mitchellesque folk singer, and felt we were truly in California.

We had dinner that night at the Madonna - a dining room full of pink sofas decorated with gilt cupids and topped off with a plastic tree in the middle (spray-painted gold of course) that had fairy lights all over it.  A doll dressed in a bridal gown swung back and forth above our heads advertising the bridal shop, while old folks danced to "Pensylvania 6-5000" in the ballroom.  It was quite wonderful, so you can imagine how heartbroken we were when we had to check out the next day.  

It's a shame we weren’t able to spend more time in smaller towns like this, where the manners are sweet and good-natured and where you actually feel like you're meeting real Americans, as opposed to either sickly-sweet representatives of the tourism industry, or irritable public servants with feelings of inadequacy about their small genetalia.

But The Madonna was a scarily expensive place to stay, so I booked us into a cheap hotel in Hollywood and we boarded the train to LA.  Los Angeles was not somewhere we particularly wanted to go but it's just sort of THERE and you can't avoid it really.  So we got on the train and WHOOSH - raced through the Californian landscape at the dizzying speed of 20 miles per hour, arriving a mere 6 hours later.  

On the way, the scenery was stunning, with mountains on one side and the sea on the other.  It made me sad that we hadn't managed to find a place to stay in Santa Barbara (it was graduation week and the place was booked out) as it looked gorgeous.  Also Pismo Beach, a place I had previously only heard of from Bugs Bunny cartoons.  

He was always popping up in Spain or the Antarctic with a map, asking someone if this was Pismo Beach and then reckoning he should've "taken that left toin at Albuquoikee."

I would love to go to Albuquoikee someday, too.