We left Wednesday a little after noon, and headed straight to Falafel's Drive-In in San Jose. Shweetie had heard about this place constantly on the Live 105 morning show, and had even seen it on the Food Network's Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. We figured it's (sort of) on the way, and since we're hardly ever in or driving through the South Bay, it made sense to have lunch there. The line was long, as it was about 1:00 pm by the time we got there, but we got our food within minutes of ordering. We had the special (a large falafel sandwich and banana milkshake), a small hummus, and onion rings. I'm no falafel expert, but I thought the sandwich was delicious, and the banana milkshake was perfect with it, to offset any lingering spiciness. The hummus wasn't the best I've had, but it was OK, and the onion rings were, well, onion rings. There is really no decor to speak of at all, but the little patio area was clean and kept us sheltered from the wind that was chilling me to the bone when we were waiting in line to order. The next time I'm in San Jose, I'd definitely like to go back.
After filling up on the tasty grub, we jumped back into the car and headed down Highway 101 to the Pelican Cove Inn. Several hours later, we arrived at a clean and comfortable place, right along the beautiful and blustery beach. The rooms at the inn are more like a traditional hotel rather than the bed-and-breakfast places I associate with small coastal properties, but I thought it was a good deal for $99 a night, considering it also included breakfast, afternoon wine and cheese, and evening desserts. We were also upgraded to a "partial ocean view" room for free, and I'm really glad we hadn't opted to pay the extra $10 per night to upgrade to this room when we booked it, since you practically had to be at the very right edge of the window in order to see the ocean at all. For free it was fine, but if I'd paid an extra $10 for it per night, I definitely would have felt ripped off. The inn houses both rooms and suites, and internet service is free in the suites, and $10 in the rooms. However, they didn't bother putting a password on their wi-fi service, so internet access was free for us, for all intents and purposes. Good thing we brought our laptop with its wireless card! Muahaha!
We had dinner on Wednesday night at Robin's, this quaint little place just five minutes from the inn. They had a pretty eclectic menu, complete with five kinds of curry plates, fajitas and enchiladas, donburi, and pasta. In fact, on Thursday nights, they also serve sushi. Based on the recommendations I'd read on Yelp, I ordered the salmon bisque and the lobster enchiladas. Shweetie ordered the pork osso buco. I enjoyed the two things I ordered (though Shweetie only thought they were OK), and especially enjoyed his osso buco, which was so tender it fell away from the bone without the use of a knife. Plus, I really liked our waitress, who, when I ordered a bowl of the bisque, hesitated and then recommended we order a cup instead because she was afraid we would be too full. She even told us, "If the cup's not enough for you, I'll just give you some more soup." Anyway, we took her advice and went with the cup, and it turned out she was right. We left her a slightly bigger tip for looking out for us.
The next day we headed north ten miles to check out the elephant seals at the rookery in San Simeon. There were quite a few weaners (elephant seals whose mothers have returned to sea), hanging out on the beach like slugs, shimmying along in the sand, snuggling with each other, and using their flippers to throw sand onto their backs. They were so cute, but we also unfortunately saw quite a few dead seals, half-buried under the sand, being picked at by giant birds, and making the entire area smell really bad. Tis the circle of life.
After the excitement of the elephant seals, we started heading back towards the inn, then stopped at Hearst Castle, which is four miles south of the elephant seal rookery. We walked around the visitor's center, debated about whether to go up to the castle itself, then ultimately decided to skip it. We've both seen the castle before on vacations with our parents, and neither of us felt the need to see it again. Plus the introductory tour was $20 per person, and tours of each additional wing were an additional $20 per person as well, which seemed pretty expensive considering we were sort of on the fence about whether we were really interested in seeing it again anyway. Whatever, maybe we're just cheap.
At this point we were wondering just what the heck to do with our time, so we headed back to the downtown area to wander around and pick up a light snack. Thanks to spending such extensive amounts of time on Yelp, I remembered there was a British-style tea house that people had raved about, called The Tea Cozy. We found it just a block away from Robin's, glanced at their lunch menu, then headed inside for probably the best meal of our trip. This place was really cute, and, as the name of the place suggests, serves all of their tea in teapots wrapped in colorfully knitted tea cozies. We ordered the Duchess Tea, which included a tea sandwich (we picked the salmon and cucumber), a homemade scone with strawberry preserves and Devonshire cream, and a pot of tea (we picked PG Tips, a traditional British tea). We also ordered a savory sausage roll, which was exactly what it sounds like - a sausage wrapped in a pastry, a bowl of Scotch broth soup, which was a delicious and satisfying beef and barley soup, and a pot of sticky toffee pudding tea, which sounds gross, but smelled exactly like it sounds and didn't taste too intensely sweet. We finished off our meal with dessert, a real sticky toffee pudding, which was intensely sweet. The most amazing part of this meal was the scone, which was the best darn scone either of us had ever had in our lives, as it was soft and not dry, and I loved the strawberry preserves that went with it.
We walked around town a little bit after that and window shopped (including a drug store that had an exhausting collection of rubber duckies), to help us work off our lunch, then headed back to the inn for our free wine and cheese, because that's exactly what we needed - more food. Riiiight....
We finished the evening with dinner at Linn's, another Yelp favorite, though we weren't nearly as impressed with the food or desserts here as we were with Robin's and The Tea Cozy. Shweetie ordered the chicken pot pie, which several people had said was awesome, but we were disappointed when we realized that it wasn't fresh, but instead was of the frozen variety. I ordered the snapper special, which was pretty good, but I would have preferred it to not be fried. We finished it off with a slice of banana cream pie, which had a wonderful banana taste and perfect creaminess. The only thing lacking was the crust, which was chewy instead of being flaky. It tasted as if it had been refrigerated rather than made fresh that day, which I think was probably the case. Shweetie had apple pie à la mode, which was also good.
The next day we checked out of the inn, then started on the winding drive home. During our long trip along Highway 1, we stopped in Big Sur to take pictures along the coast, Carmel for a quick bite and to do some window shopping (though I did actually buy some cool socks at the Sockshop), Monterey for some otter watching (we saw a few otters floating on the waves and chowing down on crustaceans) and dinner at Vivolo's Chowder House (people on Yelp swear by their chowder, which was in fact perfectly creamy and clammy), and finally, Gilroy for some outlet shopping.
Our little roadtrip was really fun and relaxing, and the best part was that when we came home, I still had two more days off before having to head back to work!
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