Traveling the Pacific Coast Highway, LA-SF show will feature interviews with some of the leading voices in tourism from Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Simeon, Paso Robles, Carmel, Monterey, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Napa/Sonoma, and more. Not to be missed. You’ll hear it from all of them on our upcoming, LET’S TRAVEL! Radio show. You’ll learn about historic sites, fabulous scenery, fine wines, and where everything is organic. Add lots of greenery, sun-shadded mountains, cutsy turn-of-the-century cottages, stone structures, villas, and mission-type homes of every color and stripe and you have the best of California on or off of U.S.Highway1 . What could be better. There’s also the neat and charming streets and alleys in the downtown parts of the cities we visited with their intimate bistros and restaurants, their dense floral and garden patches, roadside vistas, and, of course, the weather. And there’s the Pacific Ocean, where huge currents of sea-green thunder to the shore in plain sight over huge bolders of rock and sand. A fabulous sight.
Traveling the Pacific Coast Highway, LA-SF is a love adventures. Susi, my partner and I had the pleasure to meet so many figures who make this part of our American landscape a visual feast. Please join as as we discover one of our country’s most revered travel routes, US 1, and those who inhabit and celebrate the localities where they live.
In LA, there was Michael McDowell, Senior Director of Cultural Tourism and Erika Garcia-Lavyne of the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, a world-class hotel. In Santa Monica it was Kim Baker, the city’s marketing manager and in Santa Barbara there was Kate J.Dykes, the tourism sector’s president and Alex de L’Arbre, her very able communications manager, and Michel Redmon and Dan Calderon from the Santa Barbara Historical Museum, a must see. In San Simeon at the Hearst Castle it was John Allen, the marketing director, and in Paso Robles it was Kathy Bonelli at whose unique carriage house we stayed one night and Shonna Howenstein, the hospitality manager of their CVB. In Monterey it was Annette Gregg, their VP for tourism, and in Santa Cruz it was Brigid Fuller, communication manager for their historic Boardwalk with its century old classic fun park, and in Carmel it was Monta Potter, their lead executive who filled us in on their city’s colorful galleries and oceanfront, and in San Francisco it was the affable Laurie Armstrong, head of media relations for both the US and Canada for the SF Travel Association and Sue Muzzin, the head of Pier 39’s communications department where we learned to eat fish at their world renowned Fisherman’s Wharf. We thank Deborah Wakefield, CityPASS’s communications manager whose passbooks were useful in enabling us to learn more about the city at a reasonable rate, at what to see and where to go ( www.CityPass.com). If this wasn’t enough a side trip took us to Napa Valley where we met Susan Storck, marketing pro for the valley’s tourism council and her boss, Clay Gregory, the bureau’s president whose wisdom provided us with an opportunity to ride the Napa Valley Wine Train where we had a sumptous lunch over a three-hour ride through the vineyards of Napa and with thanks to Donna Clark and Andrea Guzman, the services managers there. This was followed by a stay at historic Calistoga where Eden Umble and her team at the visitors center greeted us and introduced us to their fabled wine districts . Our final stop was to Sonoma County where Tina Fuller, the pr person in charge of the media opened a door for us to discover the wine districts in her precincts. We were most grateful for their help. They made it happen.
All of this and more on the next LET’S TRAVEL! Radio show where we’ll discover the joys of Traveling the Pacific Coast Highway, LA-SF.
A special mention to the California Travel & Tourism Commission in Sacramento for guiding us through, epecially to Kathy Burnside and her team (www.visitcalifornia.com ) and to the people at VW for helping us with transport. Their new EOS 2012 model was a dream ride with stylish comfort, superb road handling, easy-to-handle steering on US 1 and good mileage, up to 30 mpg in fact. This their newest hard top convertible with climate control and safety features in a 6-speed turbo charge trany was really a fun ride all the way. Kudos.
Michael Zufolo, Editor, reporting for LET’S TRAVEL! Radio
