Moisture - where is the moisture?
Since we returned yesterday afternoon from California I could literally watch my skin shrivel up and crack in places. For about a week we’ve been spoiled with moisture-galore and now we are back in dry-as-can-be-state.
Candice and Pia left a week ago on Thursday and I followed them on Saturday. Our first stop was Cupertino where we stayed with Pia’s grand-parents. The Lee-residence there has turned into a real-estate-agent’s dream home since I saw it last. Especially the wine cabinet is up my alley - great job! We met friends and family there and certainly quenched the thirst for some good chinese food.
On Tuesday we took the rental car down south to Santa Barbara to visit Candice’s sister Pam, her husband Edwin and Edwin’s mom Norma. Oh my, now I almost forgot cutie-poochie Fungus (their ever-hungry pug). We received a very warm welcome and were allowed to stay with Pia in the master bedroom. The three of us have not been to Santa Barbara before and we really, really liked what we saw down there: yes, it’s expensive, but it is also charming, because it does seem to have the right size (looks like after spending some time in Santa Fe we don’t like anything “too-big”).
Pia loved the beach. Even though the water was nowhere near to temperature levels that daddy likes, Pia dipped her toes into wave after wave and it took ages to drag her back up on the warm, dry sand. We explored Santa Barbara a bit, went to the harbour:
… and let Pam and Edwin show us some of the culinary highlights of SB. On the last day we were allowed to visit Pam (as in “Dr. Lee”) at work and it was weird to see her all professional after all the years.
Most of Friday we spent on the road going up Highway 1 along the coast. Had to stop several times to dip Pia’s footsies in the ocean (and clean up the barf in the car). One of the stops along the road was Solvang, which calls itself the “Danish capital of the USA”. Solvang recently became famous for being part of the movie Sideways. If you plan to stop there, don’t do it, it’s not worth it. It’s a collection of creepy little houses that look like they just escaped a bad Disney-Snowwhite-remake. The little houses are occupied by the creepiest shops (yes, Thomas Kinkade is one of them) selling the creepiest things. And the worst is that you have all those Americans and Japanese taking pictures of the unique Danish landscape. Pfui Teufel!
The last evening we spent with Betty back in Cupertino, having yet another good dinner. On Saturday we departed for LA and on to Albuquerque.
Pia was a very good the whole time. We think she’s close to being completely pottie-trained and we are not scared of long plane-trips any longer. Now if we could only pack some of the moisture …
PS: Deee - you can find the bavarian-house-tour here on Google-Video. I shot it in 16:9 aspect ratio, but google only supports 4:3 - things look taller than expected 
PS2: I really tried to rescue some of the other photographs from Candice’s camera, but most of them seem to focus on some imaginery object in the frame and leave all the interesting subjects blurry. I wish I had some relatives photos, but I guess we need to spend some dineros on a new camera first …