CALIFORNIA ON FILM: MALIBU & BIG SUR

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Emma Hoareau

Emma Hoareau
July 8, 2019

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CALIFORNIA ON FILM: MALIBU & BIG SUR

For the second leg of the trip (you can see the photos from Joshua Tree and Malibu here) we headed back to the coast and stopped off in Malibu before driving up to Big Sur.

We spent one night at The Surfrider Malibu, which is perfectly situated by the water and Malibu Pier – and has an incredible roof terrace which we had dinner on as the sun set. We opted for margarita’s and the most delicious seafood risotto which was perhaps my favourite meal of the whole trip.

While driving up the coast the next day we decided to have lunch in Santa Barbara, at Brophy Bros which is a seafood restaurant right by the port and wow the mussel spaghetti (if you’re sensing a food theme for this part, you’re bang on). We also popped into have a look at Ysidero Ranch which was gorgeous, and actually the small towns around there are all very sweet and picturesque – especially Los Olivos. There is so much beautiful scenery around which we had to stop from stopping every 10 minutes to take photos of! But when we saw the field of purple flowers, we just had to – the colours are quite extraordinary.

Driving up to Big Sur was perhaps the most make it up as we go part of the trip (we only booked our flights 3 days before arriving!) and we had left this to last but found a lodge to stay in in the small town of Cambria right on the waterfront which we used as our base while driving up to see the sights the next day. I will say the road driving up does get quite windy eventually!

We stopped off at the seal beach, Mcway Falls and Big Sur bakery which came highly recommended and did the most delicious pastries, coffees, cookies… basically everything. We had check out staying at Ventana but honestly it was just so expensive for what it was (we went in to have a look) and even the ‘glamping’ has no toilet so you’d have to walk through the forest in the dark which after our scare in Joshua Tree we were most certainly not up for. So we drove back down to Cambria for the night before leaving the next morning and made one quick pit stop in Venice Beach to see my cousin before both boarding our flights home.

I hope you love the photos below – we tried to shoot on film as much as we could. I shot on my Olympus mju ii and Olive on her Contax T2. The film we used can be found here.