Solvang and the Santa Ynez Valley-Sideways Land!

Friday afternoon we took a drive up the coast to Solvang and the Santa Ynez valley to do a little cycling and some Christmas shopping. They filmed the movie Sideways in the Santa Ynez valley so it's always fun to go up there and see all the wineries and restaurants where they filmed the movie.

We got there in decent time despite the holiday traffic. We took Pacific Coast Highway up past Pt. Mugu then drove over past the outlets and picked up the 101 the rest of the way up to our hotel in Buellton.

We checked in then drove over to the little town of Solvang to have a look around. Solvang is a little town probably no more than a few square blocks. Most of the buildings are all timbered and decorated to look exactly like a little Danish village. Actually parts of it really reminded us of Switzerland--the same types of shops and items. It's a little cheesey in places but there were a few shops that had some cute items. By the time we got there it was around 5pm and many of the shops were closing so after looking in about 5 shops or so we went to dinner.

The Hitching Post restaurant, one of the places where Sideways was filmed, was right along the route from Solvang to our hotel so we went there for dinner. It looked exactly as it did in the movie and despite the fact that it was packed and we didn't have a reservation they seated us immediately. We got steaks and had our waiter suggest a good wine. Both glasses he brought out were pretty good. Tom of course would rather just have a cup of grape juice but in wine country, you really should have at least one glass of wine.

After dinner we bought movie tickets for National Treasure-Book of Secrets which was horrible-- we should have checked the write up on Maxim's Movie Blog before going. After that we turned in early because we had a long bike ride planned for early the next morning.

We put off riding until as late as possible because it was basically freezing. We probably didn't start out this morning until about 10am. The ride was fantastic! As we got going the sun warmed us up a bit so we were actually pretty comfortable. We set out on a the very quiet Santa Rosa Road and rode over rolling hills past alternating farms, vineyards and orchards. We saw lots of cows and horses. They looked bored and showed no interest in us as we rode past.

We completed our loop by driving about 20 miles down Rt. 246 which, though much busier than the road, it had a really wide shoulder/bike lane so we could ride two across most of the way. Total ride was a little under 40 miles-- good enough to feel like a workout but not so much that we were drained for the rest of the day. After that we showered then headed off to get some lunch and do some shopping in Los Olivos, a cute little town we discovered when we did our 100 mile bike ride up there back in March.

Lunch in Los Olivos was nice and we found some great stuff in a little shop not too far down the street from the cafe which we picked up after lunch. After we finished our shopping, we were pretty much done with the Santa Ynez valley so we took off for home.

It was a great little getaway. If you're looking for a really nice mini vacation-- head up there. Really, spend a night-- we stayed at the Marriott in Buellton in a suite almost as big as our 2br apt for a really reasonable rate. If you're not into cycling, you can sub in some wine tastings since there are wine tasting rooms about every 3 feet in the towns. Anyway, we had a really good time.