jynxed's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Summer Vacation: Part 2 "You're Solvang, You Probably Think this Song is About You" So, Part One We checked out of the Aku Aku (maybe Little Caesar's opened a chained of motels...Little Sleazer's or something...Pizza pizza...aku aku...doo-doo doo-doo). As we were loading up the Escape, I noticed that the people in the next room had come out to enjoy the splendid morning. They were an older couple, I estimated their age at approximately 117, and they pulled out a couple chairs and sat on the outdoor walkway with a cup o' joe and toothless smiles on their faces. I envied them. I mean really, to be senile enough that the highlight of your morning is the back of cheap motel, an empty crumbling pool, a web of buzzing powerlines, and a dumpster with a cloud of flies overhead...wow. Really, wow. Anyway, we left behind scenic north LA and headed up the coast on the 101. There's an unusual phenomenon in LA that you almost have to see to believe. I don't know how many millions of people call LA their home, but I do know one thing: every Saturday morning, every last one of them have one thing on their mind: GET THE HELL OUTTA THERE! See, they come down the I-5 to San Diego every Saturday morning from about 9 am to 2 pm. The freeway is ass to nose from Orange County down to La Jolla. It's taken my sister 3 to 4 hours to get down here before, even though the drive is easily doable in an hour without the mad dash to flee to City of Angels. Well, Amanda and I soon discovered that the people in north LA hate their hometown as much as the rest of their fellow Angelos, and we found ourselves buried in a river of cars that stretched from the Aku Aku, through Ventura, and into Santa Barbara. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the average IQ of the drivers along that stretch was somewhere along the lines of 14. It didn't help that someone had smacked into a telephone pole and their highly skilled technicians were desperately trying to clear it out of the road and rectify the situation through some advanced form of telepathy, seeing as they were all standing around scratching their asses and watching the cars crawl by. I considered stopping because I have never witnessed true telekinesis, and I would have enjoyed seeing these buttcrack wielding psychic masters maneuver the board through the air like freakin Yoda, but my stomach was growling and we had already decided to eat lunch in Solvang. Damn. We climbed the hills over Santa Barbara and I enjoyed the countryside. There are some beautiful meadows up there, even though the grass had surely been dead for months now. After we escaped the moron parade on the freeway, the drive was relaxing and spectacular. We pulled into Solvang and found ourselves in the middle of their Fiesta!, a big latin celebration of music, dancing, and more Mexican food than the Taco Bell dog could eat in a year. There were also more tourists than Godzilla could eat in a year. Lots and lots of cameras, that's all I'll say... :) We eventually found a parking place and walked through the town looking for a place to eat. Solvang is a little Danish town, complete with quaint little windmills and lots of pubs and silly Scandanavian names. Every giftshop sells Viking helmets, for those of you who don't mind letting the world know you're feeling a little horny (heh). And the sheer quantity of Hamlet references is staggering. There have been a plethora of Danes throughout history; why they chose to focus on a homicidal maniac with an Oedipus complex is beyond me. I mean, there's...well no. How about...yeah. Um... Okay, okay...If my mom was Glenn Close I might have some impure thoughts about her as well... :) Anyway, we wound up at The Heidelberg Inn, a nifty little German pub kind of place. I had a pastrami sandwich and a bowl of clam chowder. It was excellent. Two thumbs up and a smile from Jynx. And having a waitress who looked like Cameron Diaz wearing a short little German pub wench outfit wasn't too shabby either. ;) (And let me formally apologize for the horrendously nauseating pun in this morning's title...I love awful puns. :) 10:18 a.m. - August 17, 2001 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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