The Official "Explore Southern California!" Thread

[PiratesMansion]

I've been doing some more sightseeing in Southern California, so why not return to this thread? This is Part 1, stuff outside of LA:

Hearst Castle, Upstairs Suites tour: This was something I was supposed to do two years ago, but I opted out of it after a very real heat advisory at the top of the mountain. I thought it was a more interesting overall tour than the Grand Rooms tour I did two years ago, and we had a fantastic, informative tour guide. Demerits for STILL having broken toilets at the visitors center two years later. I get it, everyone's hurting, but having porta potties out front because you won't fix your toilets at the visitor center for a lavish old house for at least two years is, uh, wildly unacceptable IMO. Or perhaps they did fix them at some point between my 2023 and 2025 visits and someone can testify to that? It would make me feel a little better.

Mission, San Luis Obispo: More modest in scope than the one in Santa Barbara, but hey, it's free!

Lotusland, Montecito: This blew me away. I've started visiting botanical gardens over the past few years, and I started hearing about this one through guidebooks, etc. Despite the hoops you have to go through (book a few months out, you have pretty much exactly two hours to visit, and so on), this really felt like the Disneyland of botanical gardens to me. Incredibly beautiful and well-kept, and the morning fog floating in really made it feel like we could have been in a truly undiscovered jungle, or something from a Hollywood film come to life. Other than the relatively ho-hum rose garden, everything here was exceptionally presented.

Santa Barbara Zoo: Eh, fine for the kids, pretty setting, underwhelming otherwise. I stopped by mainly because I like zoos and my grandmother took me to this one as a kid during the six months she and my grandfather lived in Santa Barbara. No need to go back.

Santa Barbara Presidio: It's mostly a replica! The info about how the presidios/missions/etc. were set up frankly is more interesting than this site, but hey, it's cheap and historic, so why not?

Santa Barbara Courthouse: The most POTC-esque government building you've ever visited. You may be too into theme parks if the Pirates overture starts playing in your head as you wonder down some of these hallways. Great views from the top tower, wonderfully distinctive styling inside the rest of the building. The clock room was closed this time around, but everything else was still viewable on a weekend.

 

[D.Silentu]

I've always found it charming that Mission San Luis Obispo happens to sit in the middle of town.

 

[truecoat]

I've always found it charming that Mission San Luis Obispo happens to sit in the middle of town.

The Alamo is the same way, right down town San Antonio.

 

[PiratesMansion]

Now, the LA side of things:
To be honest, this didn't go quite how I expected it to go; not because I didn't enjoy myself, but because I wasn't on the ball for a few things (who knew Getty Villa required reservations far out? Perhaps this is common knowledge in SoCal) and was getting a bit tired and worn out. Ah well. Still had fun and will be back later. Anyway, as to what I did:

-LA Zoo. I want to say I was told not to go to this zoo earlier in this thread, but hey, I wanted to go to the Autry Museum, they face each other, I like visiting (and have made a habit of visiting new ones on my trips) zoos, and there's no parking fee, so how bad could it be, right? I have to say that the landscaping (much like Santa Barbara) was gorgeous, and much better than other zoos, but ultimately, zoos are about seeing animals, and here I found the LA Zoo to be lacking. Not so much on the bottom end of things-I actually kind of liked their "covered three enclosure" setup they had for many of their exhibits, and they had one of the better reptile houses I've seen-but nothing wowed, nothing impressed. The layout was a little confusing, and much like Magic Mountain, I feel like if you're going to design your site around being on a hill, you need to have something worthwhile at the top of the hill for the climb to have felt worth the effort. Some ox-like animals and ostriches weren't it.

-Autry Museum. I've been to a few western museums and plan to go to more, in part because I enjoy western art and seeing how people present the myth and the reality of the western frontier. I found Autry to be pretty close to perfect for what I was expecting going in-a decent, straightforward mix of what was with some hollywood nods as well. The bottom floor I particularly enjoyed. As someone who once intended to be a history teacher, it was...notable?...to see the Manifest Destiny painting (not actually called that, but the default image many people think of and show when that topic is discussed) and how tiny it is despite its legacy.

-Academy Museum. They got me back for the zoetrope and the ruby slippers. The museum's still not entirely my thing, but I did appreciate that about half of it was redone from my visit two years ago, and they clearly chose a design that would allow them to freely add, remove, or re-arrange exhibits, and that seems to have worked out for them.

The Grove's going to get its own post, so we'll come back to that.

-Magic Mountain-the solar panels covering the lot are a big upgrade. Not much else to say otherwise. I only popped in for the last hour and got a ride each on Revolution, Viper, and X2 (running one train and VERY slow) in that time. Ninja would have been ridden as well (amongst occasional rumbings of its imminent removal), but would up being down. I had forgotten how to get into X2's restraints, so kudos to the insanely patient and kind ride op who allowed me several attempts to get the restraint secure and fastened, more than most would have. The fact that I got it VERY easily on the final try implies that a big part of my struggle to get into the seat was user error and not fatness, and for right now that's a positive.

-Huntington Gardens-This was the sleeper hit of the trip. I knew it had some sort of museum exhibits, a Chinese garden, and a Japanese garden. What I didn't realize was that they were part of an enormous complex that also included several art buildings and many, many more gardens than I was aware of going in. If Lotusland was like the Disneyland of botanical gardens, Huntington strikes me as the WDW. The size, quality, and variety was far beyond what I expected, and I would say that the Chinese and Japanese gardens are among the best, if not the best, I have seen in this country. Between Lotusland and Huntington, SoCal residents are ludicrously spoiled when it comes to botanical attractions. I will continue to visit others, but I'm not really sure these are toppable as a 1-2 punch.

One more post coming in this saga, in which I rant about The Grove.

 

[PiratesMansion]

-The Grove. I guess I see, on some level, what the hype is about. It's attractively landscaped, it's got some transportation ambiance via some omnibus/red car trolley hybrid vehicle, and it's an inviting place to spend some time. It's not actively dying like most malls I'm familiar with. It's a bit smaller than I would have pictured given the hype, but I suppose it speaks to how it has become part of its environment in spite of its size-heck, maybe that even explains why Disneylanders like it, because on some level, it's intimate for what it is. But ultimately, I am not a shopper (apart from an occasional Barnes & Noble visit, which, hey, they have one! Kudos to them for that), so to me, at the end of the day, a mall is still a mall and it's not so (IMO) far superior to, say, DTD as to crush it to smithereens as has been portrayed by some on here, at least for me. The way I see it, even DTD looks nicer than probably 90% of malls that still exist in this country, at least of the ones I have seen (there are only so many shiny new and/or outdoor malls in the Midwest). But anyway, back to the Grove. It certainly is, uh, aspiring to be something, but is that admirable or is it comical? For one, it is utterly ludicrous to have a "mall concierge" that no matter how nice they attempt to make the surroundings, is still ultimately in a parking garage, at least to me, but we'll get back to that. Similarly, there are apparently two different sections of the mall with no super obvious barrier between them, and apparently when you pass that barrier, it does matter whether or not you get your parking validated at a restaurant that is still on the same property, which is absurd. I'm sure some people appreciate some of these things, to me they were baffling. But anyway, story time...

After eating at one of the restaurants at The Grove, I accidently left my bag behind, which, obviously, is my fault. I unfortunately didn't realize this until I was literally sitting in the parking lot of Magic Mountain about an hour later, also my fault. Luckily The Grove was open for another hour, so I could at least get in touch with someone to confirm that they have my bag and that I could pick it up the next day, right? Wrong. In trying to call the restaurant, each time I got "this caller's mailbox is too full and cannot accept any other voicemails," at which point I was automatically hung up on. Ok. So I guess I'll try the Grove's own line; after all, they have a concierge, so maybe it will be easier to get in touch with them than malls without concierges. Well, that concierge must have been very, very busy, because they never answered any of my calls, but they did say it in the recording that played would be faster if I let them know via text, so I did. I also left a voicemail explaining the situation and gave my contact info. Even though there was a full hour in which all of these parties were apparently open, no attempt was made to contact me in any way whatsoever that evening. Finally in the morning, concierge apparently noticed my calls and did get in touch with me, but it was a bit frustrating to have to wait that long to get any sort of acknowledgement of my situation. So the next time someone goes off about Disney's bad customer service...I've had experiences like this with Disneyland, Knott's, and now The Grove. Maybe I just have bad luck, maybe it's a SoCal thing, I don't know. But it's not like Disney's the only company in the region that's given me weirdly unresponsive and/or delayed service.

So The Grove? I guess I see why people like it, but I'm not sure I'll grant it a revisit.

 

[mickEblu]

-The Grove. I guess I see, on some level, what the hype is about. It's attractively landscaped, it's got some transportation ambiance via some omnibus/red car trolley hybrid vehicle, and it's an inviting place to spend some time. It's not actively dying like most malls I'm familiar with. It's a bit smaller than I would have pictured given the hype, but I suppose it speaks to how it has become part of its environment in spite of its size-heck, maybe that even explains why Disneylanders like it, because on some level, it's intimate for what it is. But ultimately, I am not a shopper (apart from an occasional Barnes & Noble visit, which, hey, they have one! Kudos to them for that), so to me, at the end of the day, a mall is still a mall and it's not so (IMO) far superior to, say, DTD as to crush it to smithereens as has been portrayed by some on here, at least for me. The way I see it, even DTD looks nicer than probably 90% of malls that still exist in this country, at least of the ones I have seen (there are only so many shiny new and/or outdoor malls in the Midwest). But anyway, back to the Grove. It certainly is, uh, aspiring to be something, but is that admirable or is it comical? For one, it is utterly ludicrous to have a "mall concierge" that no matter how nice they attempt to make the surroundings, is still ultimately in a parking garage, at least to me, but we'll get back to that. Similarly, there are apparently two different sections of the mall with no super obvious barrier between them, and apparently when you pass that barrier, it does matter whether or not you get your parking validated at a restaurant that is still on the same property, which is absurd. I'm sure some people appreciate some of these things, to me they were baffling. But anyway, story time...

After eating at one of the restaurants at The Grove, I accidently left my bag behind, which, obviously, is my fault. I unfortunately didn't realize this until I was literally sitting in the parking lot of Magic Mountain about an hour later, also my fault. Luckily The Grove was open for another hour, so I could at least get in touch with someone to confirm that they have my bag and that I could pick it up the next day, right? Wrong. In trying to call the restaurant, each time I got "this caller's mailbox is too full and cannot accept any other voicemails," at which point I was automatically hung up on. Ok. So I guess I'll try the Grove's own line; after all, they have a concierge, so maybe it will be easier to get in touch with them than malls without concierges. Well, that concierge must have been very, very busy, because they never answered any of my calls, but they did say it in the recording that played would be faster if I let them know via text, so I did. I also left a voicemail explaining the situation and gave my contact info. Even though there was a full hour in which all of these parties were apparently open, no attempt was made to contact me in any way whatsoever that evening. Finally in the morning, concierge apparently noticed my calls and did get in touch with me, but it was a bit frustrating to have to wait that long to get any sort of acknowledgement of my situation. So the next time someone goes off about Disney's bad customer service...I've had experiences like this with Disneyland, Knott's, and now The Grove. Maybe I just have bad luck, maybe it's a SoCal thing, I don't know. But it's not like Disney's the only company in the region that's given me weirdly unresponsive and/or delayed service.

So The Grove? I guess I see why people like it, but I'm not sure I'll grant it a revisit.

Yeah locals from around here really dont hype up the Grove I don’t think. Maybe when it first opened decades ago? It’s a nice outdoor mall and one of the many attractions in the greater Los Angeles area. I’d never advertise it as some huge Tourist attraction. I would probably take someone from out of town for an evening of afternoon to grab a meal and walk around but I wouldn’t overhype it. Us Disneyland fans like it because it is reminiscent of Main Street or that friendly reassuring architecture. Barnes n Nobles makes me happy. Nostalgic. Love the smell of the all the books/ paper. I like that that Taschen book store is there too. This all reminds me of In N Out and how it’s impossible for it to ever meet expectations of tourists or match the hype. As it’s not solely about the burger itself. It’s the culture. The convenience. The price. The nostalgia. The fact that it’s a relatively light burger that one can eat often. The fresh factor and of course the taste.

Did you go to Farmers Market right next door? Hopefully you found your bag. The Americana in Glendale is a bigger, better version of the Grove IMO.

 

[PiratesMansion]

Yeah locals from around here really dont hype up the Grove I don’t think. Maybe when it first opened decades ago? It’s a nice outdoor mall and one of the many attractions in the greater Los Angeles area. I’d never advertise it as some huge Tourist attraction. I would probably take someone from out of town for an evening of afternoon to grab a meal and walk around but I wouldn’t overhype it. Us Disneyland fans like it because it is reminiscent of Main Street or that friendly reassuring architecture. Barnes n Nobles makes me happy. Nostalgic. Love the smell of the all the books/ paper. I like that that Taschen book store is there too. This all reminds me of In N Out and how it’s impossible for it to ever meet expectations of tourists or match the hype. As it’s not solely about the burger itself. It’s the culture. The convenience. The price. The nostalgia. The fact that it’s a relatively light burger that one can eat often. The fresh factor and of course the taste.

Did you go to Farmers Market right next door? Hopefully you found your bag. The Americana in Glendale is a bigger, better version of the Grove IMO.

To be clear, I wasn't going into it expecting it be a big tourist attraction, I just wanted somewhere to eat outside in a nice atmosphere and I figured it would deliver on that front, which, there was food, the atmosphere was pleasant, and it was outside, so I guess it delivered on that front.

I went into the Farmers Market just enough that they denied me comped parking, lol.

I did get the bag back the next day; I just would have appreciated ANY sort of response or acknowledgement the night I lost it.