California Trip

We recently took the kids on a fun two-week driving trip of California. The plan was to fly into Sacramento and spend the night in Santa Rosa. We'd do a bunch of stuff in Sonoma and Marin County before heading into "The City" (San Francisco, if you didn't know) for four days. Then, we're off to the great outdoors and Yosemite National Park. After three nights in Yosemite, we would drive west to Pacific Grove for a night before heading south on the PCH to Santa Barbara. From there, it was a short drive to our Los Angeles base in Santa Monica. Here are a few interesting bits from our trip:

1. For our first evening in California, we had booked the Hilton Sonoma Wine Country in Santa Rosa via Hotwire for $86. When we arrived however, we were told they were overbooked but would comp us a night at the neighboring Fountaingrove Inn. I was angry and immediately thought "bait and switch". We had a very nice stay at the Fountaingrove Inn however so I guess we can't complain.
2. The original plan was to visit Sonoma, Glen Ellen, Petaluma, Calistoga, Point Reyes and Muir Woods all in one day before heading into the city. Well, that turned out to be way too ambitious so we ended up doing about half of it. I'm not sure what I was thinking as far as Point Reyes goes--it really requires a day in of itself! Next time, we do all this over two full days.
3. There's only one TripAdvisor top-rated, sub-$200/night hotel in San Francisco--the Chancellor Hotel. It's an old hotel with smallish rooms and no A/C, but it gets high marks. Having travelled quite a bit, I was skeptical about being "wowed", but for $151/night including parking at Union Square, how could we go wrong? Well, this hotel was awesome! The rooms are smallish but had a small walk-in closet for storage. The beds were comfy and the in-room wifi was great. Even the hot weather during our stay didn't cause us to miss air conditioning. And most of the staff were extremely friendly and helpful throughout our stay. They had complimentary fruit, cookies, coffee and beverages in either the lobby or bar area most of the day. My only complaints were the lack of a view (forgot to ask), no in-room refrigerator and a noisy toilet.
   
4. In this day and age, many managers talk about customer service but almost nobody actually puts their money where their mouth is. Here's where the Chancellor's General Manager, Wes Tyler, really did go above and beyond. On arrival, I had emptied our car of luggage and some of our other belongings (including two $45 bottles of 2005 Benziger Oonapais wine) onto the sidewalk just outside the hotel. I went in to check-in while my wife stayed with the kids and watched the bellman load up our stuff. Later, after getting our stuff and settling in, we noticed the missing wine. By the time someone could outside, our wine was long gone. We were disappointed but the obviously the mistake was nobody's in particular. Well, Mr. Tyler found out about our missing wine from a review I posted on TripAdvisor. And although he clearly didn't have to, he felt responsible and shipped us another two bottles of the wine! Now, THAT'S customer service I haven't seen in a long time. Anyhow, his passion for taking care of his guests clearly shows in this outstanding hotel!
5. Unless you have money to burn, don't eat at McCormick and Kuleto's in Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco! My wife and I have eaten at a lot of restaurants in our time including some very nice places. What struck us about McCormick and Kuleto's is that, while the view and ambiance are good, the food quality was surprisingly mediocre and expensive. And this is consistent with other M&S restaurants. $60 for a appetizer sampler? $32 for overcooked fish? Even my daughter didn't like her kid's meal. Give me a break.
6. Yosemite Valley was the perfect place to experience nature's breath-taking beauty without leaving the comforts of home behind. While I've personally done everything from primitive camping to 5-star hotels, I wasn't sure just how much nature my wife could take. She grew up living in apartments and condos, and her idea of the wilderness is the clump of trees in our backyard. Well, Yosemite offers everything from campgrounds to the full-service Ahwahnee. The Ahwahnee even has a formal dining room with a dress code! So guess where we stayed? Yup. Needless to say, the Ahwahnee was nice but it was a bit too stuffy for our taste.
7. Around Yosemite Valley, there are great hiking and biking trails, regular shuttles to get you around, many restaurants (formal sit-down and buffets), a deli and pizzeria, two bike rental locations, and a grocery store. For us, the perfect blend of civilization and nature.
8. The Big Sur fire closed the PCH the day we were heading south on it, so we had turn around at Big Sur--costing us a two hour detour. All-in-all, we were not impacted by most of the California wildfires as we just avoided most of them. Most of them started kicking up soon after we departed an area. You would've thought we started them! Anyhow, we never made it to Santa Barbara that evening so we stayed at the Apple Farm Inn in San Luis Obispo. We'd stayed there before and enjoyed it again. I'm not sure how to use this experience in the future--how do you plan around wildfires?
9. The Getty Center in LA was a great place for families because they have a wide variety of different art, interesting public spaces, and many things to do for the kids. I also felt like we were home in DC because, like the Smithsonian, there is no admission fee!
10. The last time we visited LA, we stumbled across a downtown LA shoot of "Wayne's World 2". It was very interesting and we got to see or meet Dana Carvey, Mike Meyers, Tia Carrera and Christopher Walken. This time, we were taking the kids to see the walk of stars in Hollywood, only to discover the street was closed for the red carpet premier event for "Hancock". Depending on who you ask in the family, we either cherished or wasted several hours hanging out waiting to see, shake hands or take pics of various celebs, including but not limited to, Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Peter Berg, Jason Bateman, Chris Daughtry, Sinbad, Sean Combs and the Cheetah Girls. Who are the Cheetah Girls anyhow???