10 Jul Summer Mini Road Trip Itinerary

On the long weekend of July 4th, Erik and I took a southbound mini road trip. We didn’t make much plan ahead of time and just visited locations that sister/mother-in-law recommended. In this blog, I will share some pictures and what we did from the trip below 😉

From Dublin, we left around noon on Saturday toward Monterey. We have been to Monterey couple of times to visit a place like Monterey Bay Aquarium which is very well-known place. For this trip, we dropped by Monterey just for bathroom break after about 2.5 hour of drive. It was so busy with many people visiting, and there was a big line at outside of the aquarium. After the bathroom break, we pump the gas and walked around downtown to refresh little bit. As usual, it was a bit cold there so jacket is always a must have!

Second stop was at San Luis Obispo aka SLO. Before we left to road trip, we heard that downtown SLO is such a cute spot to be, so we drove there to check it out. It was around 6pm when we got there, so we decided to find a place to stay in SLO. Maybe because it was 4th of July weekend, it was quite hard to find lodging and it was pricy as well. After we booked hotel last minutes, we walked around downtown to find place to eat dinner 😉 There were many people enjoying the weekend over drink and food outside. We found the place called Finney’s to try out, and it was pretty yummy! SLO is college town, so we saw many young ppl there. There were many drinking places to hang out in SLO, so if you like wine or beer tasting you will enjoy there.

On July 4th, after we spent the night in SLO, we decided to head to Pismo beach to eat breakfast. Drive of SLO to Pismo beach takes only 15 minutes, so I didn’t become “hangry.” Because everything was unplanned, it took us good 30 minutes of walking around to find open and the type of restaurant we wanted to eat in haha. We were looking for brunch food but we totally failed, so we got ourselves lunch-ish food. After we filled our empty stomach, we walked around on the beach to explore. It was so crowded, and we saw some people who were preparing to get down on serious partying business. After we walked off our meal, we hopped on the car to head to next destination.

The next destination was the place I was super excited to visit, Solvang. City of Solvang is called “Danish Capital of America” and as you can tell from the name, the whole town is Danish themed. We walked thru the town filled with all the boutiques that sell Danish items, windmill building, European architecture, Danish bakeries and lots of beer gardens. I got myself delicious coffee and popped into Christmas shops to get Solvang themed ornaments. The downtown was pretty big area to walk up and down. I always enjoy a country themed town, so this was definitely a perfect place to checked out for me. 

With a yummy coffee in my hand and all happy, we left Solvang to head to our final destination, Santa Barbara. Like other locations that we stopped by (except Monterey), I have never been to Santa Barbara before. We got there before 4pm, and I found out that there would be fireworks by Stearns Wharf at 9pm. We decided to stay in Santa Barbara till the firework show ends and then head back to Solvang area to spend the night. We originally wanted to stay in Santa Barbara, but we went against it since it was pricy, and affordable ones were all booked. After we found our lodging of the night, we explored the downtown and ate on repeat. In the end, we walked over 7 miles in our exploration, and I couldn’t feel my feet afterwards. I ate the most delicious avocado toast ever at Goat Tree café, and my mouth is watering as I write this 😉 Everywhere in Santa Barbara by the pier was so posh, and I was loving the vibe. I love Love LOVE crepes, so I was on the hunt to find crepe shop which luckily, I did. After the long walk thru Spanish-revival architecture and satisfying snacks, we headed to the pier to have a real meal. It was around 8pm when we arrived, and all the restaurants were jam packed. We decided to wait in line at Japanese restaurant called Oku. It looked so delicious that we could not resist!! By the time we got into the restaurant, it was already 10 minutes before 9pm. We ordered our dinner, and we went outside to watch firework show when it started. We haven’t been able to watch firework show on July 4th for a while, so we were happy that we got to experience it!

We spend a night in Solvang area, and on Monday July 5th, we got into the car to drove back home. It was probably 5 hours of drive in total, and we took a late lunch break in Gilroy. The Asian restaurant we stopped by called Ginger Café had an amazing food. Omg we were so hungry that we stuffed our faces with wonton soup and fried rice dishes lol. 

So, that was all about our spontaneous mini road trip! I would love to go back to Solvang and Santa Barbara again since they were my type of places!  I don’t know if this blog post could be any help for you, but I can tell you one thing.  Wherever you decide to go, it will be a fabulous trip if you are with the right person 😉

To a mini road trip,

Fatima