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 Lily takes us to The Hall, a French restaurant in West Hollywood.
Gene has a poached-egg caviar appetizer and Lily and I both have a layered salmon-potato thing. Lily and I think along the same lines—we both select the black cod on fava beans for our main course. Gene orders the Kansas steak (from Kansas, France?). Lily gives Gene’s steak high praise: it is better than the steaks served where she works, she says.
Lily takes us to see her apartment, new since we last visited LA. She lives next door to Paramount Studios. Cool.
Her building gate opens into a courtyard with a fountain. Since she lives on the first floor, Lily can feel like the courtyard belongs to her. Lily’s cat Tiggy looks out onto the courtyard, stretches his arms on the screen and gets his paw stuck. He does this several times.
A dramatic Indonesian four-post daybed filled with brown, plush pillows dominates her living room. An orange lamp curves behind it. Her coffee table is so large she practices yoga on it.
The rest of Lily’s apartment is just as dramatic as the living room. Built in 1923, the ceiling meets the walls with curves rather than 90 degree angles. Her bathroom holds a separate shower stall and a deep tub with a sloped back. Sea-green tiles go up two-thirds of the wall and a gold-framed mirror hangs above the tub.
Lily has large mirrors all over the apartment, one hangs over the fireplace, and several tall, heavy ones with thick dark frames are propped against walls. The place feels like lush 1930s. If it were seventy years ago, Lily could be packing for a weekend as a guest at the Hearst castle (after leaving work at Paramount!).
Heading back to the hotel, we stop at a grocery store to pick up some bottled water for the room. Los Angeles tap water tastes yucky and I am accustomed to the good-tasting New York City tap water. Our tap water may taste good, but New York City grocery stores are tiny and filthy. I love visiting real grocery stores—anywhere. Walking up and down the wide aisles, I am always overwhelmed by the number of choices. The wine aisle distracts us from our water mission and we buy a couple bottles of vino.
Lily circles and circles, looking for a parking spot; it takes almost a half hour to find a bank lot where she pays eight dollars. It is about six blocks from the hotel. Nothing like jumping out of a cab and letting it drive off.
The three of us hang out in our room, drinking wine, looking at photos and watching videos on You Tube.
 We move at a crawl down the long Santa Monica Blvd, looking for our turn-off, San Vincente. We booked a room at Le Petite Hotel, a boutique hotel on residential Cynthia Street, a few blocks from Sunset and close to Lily’s apartment.
The hotel entrance is framed by a semi-stained glass awning with floral curves against clear glass. The garage door is hidden behind a blanket of ivy. The actor/desk clerk stands behind a rich, dark-wood topped counter in a tiny lobby. He wears a vaudevillian jacket of black and white vertical stripes. Wooden cubbies—old-fashioned room key holders—line the wall behind the desk.
Original paintings, one after another, fill the walls going down the corridors, which are painted with gold-leaf curlicues. The room doors are covered in puffy orange leather and the room numbers are branded onto a leather rectangle.
Our room has a dining nook with a refrigerator, sink and counter top. The sunken sleeping area is a step down and a tiny wrought-iron railing separates the two, making the room feel like an apartment. The bathroom is tiled in tiny squares of green shades. The bathroom vanity is the only piece that doesn’t work for me, painted a distressed blue-green with yellow knobs.
Lily comes by to pick us up for dinner and to have a look-see at the hotel. We walk up to the roof of the four-story building. We walk around the elevated saltwater pool and its orange lounge chairs, white umbrellas and some orange cushioned chaises as large as double beds. There is a sunken cocktail level area that has heat poles for chilly nights.
A garden restaurant runs along one side of the building.
 We are 240 miles from Los Angeles and we are eager to get there early to spend time with Gene’s cousin and our friend Lily. We fortify ourselves with the complimentary breakfast at the Pelican Cove Inn, serving hot food as well as pastries and toast. Though not fancy, the Pelican Cove Inn takes good care of its customers.
We drive past the Harmony Cellars Winery in San Luis Obispo and remember the lovely wine we had last night.
We plan to have lunch in Santa Barbara today, but it is too early to eat when we approach town. We will just walk down the pier, we think. Getting off the highway is confusing. There is Carrillo, Cabrillo and Castillo streets.
We park in an open lot and start walking toward the pier. The weather is cold, foggy and clammy and we are not getting an impression of the real Santa Barbara. Under the fog is a beautiful seaside town, but it is not making an appearance for us today. At this point, I just want a bathroom and a Starbucks. We settle for a gas station for both needs.
On the highway near Ventura, we see a huge shopping mall. So huge, the mall is more like a little city. We are trying to get back on Highway 101 after the gas stop, but we end up on the service road that parallels the highway. We wind through the mall-city.
We wonder if this Ventura Highway of the 1972 hit song by America. Is it Ventura Boulevard? Ventura Avenue? Ventura Street? Most likely, it’s Ventura Freeway.
We are coming upon LA fast and, anxious to get there, we decide to skip Highway 1 through Malibu. I may regret the shortcut later, but today I am tired and focused on our destination.
 After the Hearst Castle tour, Gene and I drive six miles south to Cambria. We are staying on the beach at the Pelican Cove Inn in the middle of the motel row called Moonstone Beach Drive.
The beach motels are only a mile or two from town. So unlike last night, we will have no trouble getting to a restaurant there.
A middle-aged man with white hair checks us in the Pelican Cove. Eager to play concierge, he describes the town’s restaurant options. A thin woman—his wife, perhaps—works the switchboard. She throws in her more ornery two cents from time to time without looking up from her work.
We ask about taking a taxi to town and the Pelican proprietors give us the number of Cambria’s only cab driver. Rob also owns the local towing company. He sometimes picks up taxi customers in his tow truck.
Our room is fussy-cute with a ceiling fan, a fireplace and maroon flowered curtains. A lonely hot tub sits behind a green plastic fence in the corner of the parking lot. The fence helps you not remember you are soaking in the parking lot. We take a fast dip.
Gene and I call the two recommended restaurants and of course, both are closed on Tuesdays.
We go with what might have been our first choice without outside advice, Robin’s, whose menu offers vegetarian dishes.
Taxi Man Rob says he won’t be able to pick us up for an hour and a half.
Forget Robin’s, we will walk to the Moonstone Beach Bar & Grill, two doors down from our motel. Our front-desk friends gave this one a middling review initially. Gene rings the front desk to see if Cambria has an alternative to Rob, and they up their rating of the place.
Looking for a job? Start a competing taxi business in Cambria, California. You only need one taxi, two if you want to have the biggest fleet in town.
Gene and I sit inside next to the window overlooking the water. The night is a little chilly to sit on the porch.
We order a bottle of Harmony Cellars Chardonnay, made ten miles away in San Luis Obispo. The Oysters Rockefeller look oddly cheesy, but Gene says they are delish. Good food doesn’t have to be pretty.
We both order grilled Mahi Mahi. The fish lies under a light tomato cream sauce with shrimp. The food, good and hearty, deserves a better rating from the Pelican Cove Inn. Too cold for a walk on the beach, we return to our room to watch The Biggest Loser.
 The Hearst Castle tour is trip back in time to the 1930′s, Hollywood’s glamour days, when an invitation to spend a weekend at William Randolph Hearst’s “ranch” was coveted by celebrities.
As our tour bus chugs up the five-mile hill, we pass the grassy fields where Hearst housed the largest private zoo in America. The bus drops us off in front of the Castle, where Bob, our tour guide, waits to greet us.
Bob talks to every guest, noting their hometowns and working that information into his Castle commentary. (“No pool as big as this in Podunk, right?”) A large man with a ranger hat and squishy black tennis-shoes-disguised-as-dress-shoes, Bob sucks us all in with his booming voice and love of Hearst’s Castle and grounds. He has the special personality of a long-time tour guide—thirty-one years—infinite patience and charm.
Hearst’s Neptune Pool, as dramatic as I have seen in photos, glimmers in the heat. The pool is surrounded by Greek or Roman pillars and marble statues. The confluence of scents mingling in the garden rises up to my nostrils, creating a single, pleasing perfume. The tour group walks through one of the four-bedroom guest houses, Casa del Sol. Period clothes are hanging in the bathrooms or lain out on the short beds. (Were people that much shorter in the thirties?)
In the main house, Casa Grande, Italian church chairs are built into the walls of the long living room in the main house. Above the chairs hang grand tapestries, all hundreds of years old.
The dining room features an endlessly long, set for ten guests in the center. The packaged Hearst Castle tour does expose a weakness of the man, lest we think they are covering something up. Bob reveals Hearst’s scandalous love of low-brow ketchup. The elegant table is set up with ketchup and mustard at reachable intervals on the table to prove it. Would he have used the more sophisticated “catsup”?
We walk through the billiard room and the indoor pool, magnificent with blue and gold leaf tiles. The indoor pool, built underneath the outdoor tennis courts, is empty, exposing the delicate blue tile pattern on the bottom.
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Lily takes us to The Hall, a French restaurant in 
