ojai

Jesse and I have gotten to do a lot of fun activities since we moved to California, but it's been a year now and we don't want to get complacent and start taking our residence here for granted. There are still so many new things for us to try. So, with that in mind, we decided to drive out to Ojai for the afternoon last Saturday.

Ojai is a little town in a valley surrounded by lovely mountains and hills, not too far from Santa Barbara. It was supposedly photographed to represent the legendary Shangri-La in the 1939 movie The Lost Horizon. Now it's home to a number of interesting festivals, and at other times is just a nice, historic town with good shops and restaurants. And spas too, I am told. (We'll check those out next time.)

We didn't arrive until mid-afternoon (after a really pretty two-hour drive up the coast). The first thing we did was stop in a winery for a wine tasting. I hadn't eaten much all day, so from then on, things were a little fuzzy (but pleasant!) until we made it to dinner. Probably the three highlights for me were: the drive up on the Pacific Coast Highway and back down on the 101, Bart's Books (great outdoor bookstore, see photos below), and dinner (no shocker there).

A couple of pretty views on the edge of town.

We ate an early dinner at Osteria Monte Grappa, and oh my goodness, it was amazing.

Still a little fuzzy...need food!

Jesse with the duck linguine and a fresh-from-the-garden salad. Also had some incredible bruschetta.

A lot of the little shops were along this stretch of the main downtown road.

The rest of the pictures are from Bart's Books:

new spots

A new restaurant called Naresh's just opened two blocks from our apartment. The neon sign outside simply says "Restaurant and Bar"; inside, the logo and motto read, "Incredible Friendships Begin at Naresh's." The food is Indian, Italian, and Chinese-inspired. It's an odd combination, but the flavors worked really well together. I am totally obsessed with my new Hipstamatic app for my iPhone, so I posted pictures of each dish that we tried below (chicken tikka, scallops with cilantro-mint-yogurt sauce, vegetable samosas, and Chinese duck tacos). Except for the bread pudding with whiskey sauce...that was devoured as soon as it hit the table. Incredible friendships and good food? We're sold.

After trying Naresh's for the first time on Friday evening, we walked over to our new local mall, Santa Monica Place, which has been under construction since we moved here. It's a 15-20 minute walk, and we were glad that we didn't have to drive; traffic has been backed up from time to time since. I never really understood outdoor malls until I moved here (in the Midwest, they are painfully unpleasant for six month out of the year). This one is well-designed and really pretty. Most of the shops are out of my price range, but it looks like some of the food options are interesting (there is a great dining deck that overlooks the ocean), and it'll be a fun place to walk around now and then.