Southern California’s Treasures :

In the tradition of Route du Bonheur (road to happiness) Relais & Châteaux invites you to journey through California stopping at our luxury hotels and gourmet restaurants to create the best of the traveler’s memories.

The scenic coast running from Los Angeles to San Diego is only 130 miles long, but there are so many things to do along the way that a traveler could spend a month and never swerve from this stretch of road.

Both Los Angeles and San Diego are major cosmopolitan centers set against the magnificent backdrop of the Pacific Ocean. Go a short distance inland and there’s Anaheim with the magical world of Disneyland and Costa Mesa with its world-class shopping mall and performing arts center. Here are some thoughts on sights to see in the giant playground of Southern California. Or poke along and find your own favorites.

Most trips to Southern California begin or end with a stop in Los Angeles.

The City of Angels is a quintessential American city complete with sun-kissed beaches, movie stars, shopping malls, and cultural attractions. The size of 20 Manhattans, it’s little wonder some people have a difficult time deciding where to focus their time. There’s the ultra-hip Santa Monica and neighboring beach towns, the lush expanses of Beverly Hills and Brentwood with great shopping and gourmet dining, the newly renovated Hollywood with Grauman’s Chinese Theater and the Kodak Theatre, the new permanent home of the Oscar ceremonies, and the San Fernando Valley with Universal City and the movie studios.

An absolute “must” while touring Beverly Hills, Brentwood or its environs is a gourmet lunch or dinner at Relais & Châteaus famous Bel-Air Restaurant. Renowned as one of the most romantic restaurants in the City of Angels, the Bel-Air offers alfresco dining when the weather is fine as well as an interior that is easily beautiful enough to elevate your experience to the sublime. Of course, all this is aided by the culinary art of Grand Chef Douglas Dodd and Chef de Cuisine Bruno Lopez. Together they create Californian and Mediterranean inspirations that might be anything from sea scallop fondue to a warm Maine lobster. Nancy Reagan dined here so often the restaurant named a Cobb salad (her favorite) after her. A 35,000 bottle wine cellar with more than 1,250 varieties enhances it all.

Many of the most interesting changes are taking place in Downtown in Los Angeles, revived after years of seediness into a vibrant city core. Where once there was little more than homeless encampments now there are glistening new concert halls and superb gourmet restaurants such as Patina. Famed Grand Chef Joachim Splichal moved his flagship restaurant to the Disney Concert Hall, part of The Music Center, with three of the largest performing arts centers in the country. Combining impeccable service and delicious gourmet cuisine with special touches such as a pre-performance prix-fixe menu, a Chef’s Table with a tasting menu and a 1,500-bottle wine selection, it’s easy to see why this restaurant is already a city fixture.

If you go for dinner be sure to go early enough to take in a performance or even a tour of the new Disney Concert Hall, permanent home to the L.A. Philharmonic. It started with a $50 million contribution from Lillian Disney, who hired Frank Gehry to build her dream structure and it’s an absolute one-of-a-kind. Gehry took a minimalist but warm approach with lots of color and wood adding a one-acre urban garden on the third floor dedicated to Lillian Disney herself. Though the Disney Concert Hall is the centerpiece of The Music Center, other structures inside include the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Ahmanson Theater, and the Mark Taper Forum.

Just a few blocks north you’ll come upon The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, a contemporary religious icon designed by Spanish architect Jose Rafael Moneo. It’s the third largest cathedral in the world and the first to be built in the United States in 25 years. Grand Avenue, Downtown L.A.’s main drag, is also home to one of two downtown outposts of the Museum of Contemporary Art. MOCA is the only institution in the city completely devoted to art from1940 to the present. The Grand Avenue locale is small but always has some fascinating exhibits.

Downtown L.A. has always been known for incredibly diverse ethnicity. Nowhere is that more apparent than along Olvera Street, which served as the city’s Main Street during its years under Mexican control in the 1700s. Today the street has been transformed into a Mexican-American marketplace with food stores, craft vendors and restaurants. It is particularly popular on weekends when musicians play in the central plaza. Downtown Los Angeles is also home to the second largest jewelry district in the world after New York. The Jewelry District, bordered by Hill Street and Broadway between 5th and 8th Streets, has an unbelievable 4,900 businesses. At its center is the open-air St. Vincent’s Jewelry Center, the largest jewelry complex in the world.

From in Los Angeles you can either take I-5 South and drive inland for the fastest way to get to San Diego or, better yet, take the scenic route and travel the 42 miles of Pacific Coast known as Pacific Coast Highway, which passes a number of beach towns along the way. The very upscale Newport Beach is a boaters paradise and famous yacht port. Huntington Beach is a sleepy surf community with beautiful white, sandy beaches known as The Orange Coast. Laguna Beach is the self-proclaimed SoHo of Orange County with a laid-back atmosphere and lots of mom-and-pop surf shops and art galleries lining the streets. Long Beach, which you will also pass along the way, is now the fifth-largest city in California. It is home of the former cruise liner Queen Mary and the Long Beach Grand Prix, which is held each year in mid-April.

Inland Orange County holds one of the most famous sites in all Southern California. Disneyland in Anaheim is for kids of all ages. Much smaller and more manageable than Disney World, Disneyland also came first, imagined by Walt Disney more than 50 years ago as a safe harbor where family members could come and share experiences together. Through the years there have been many renovations to the park, including the 2001 opening of the new theme park, California Adventure.

From Anaheim it’s an easy drive to get to San Diego and its equally scenic and laid back communities. Set up base at the Relais & Chateaux’s Rancho Valencia Resort, just 25 miles north of San Diego in the beautiful suburb of Rancho Santa Fe. Besides its renown as one of the top tennis resorts in the country, Rancho Valencia has just opened doors to The Spa at Rancho Valencia, a full-service destination spa for health and well-being. One of the most luscious resort spas in the world, it has indoor and outdoor treatment rooms. Spa services also incorporate many indigenous ingredients in both massages and facials.

From Rancho Valencia the world of San Diego unfolds. Few would visit and not see Balboa Park, the nation’s largest urban cultural green space and certainly one of its most majestic, with sweeping vistas of the Pacific Ocean and a multitude of hiking and nature walks. Balboa Park is such a major cultural center, home to 15 major museums, that it is often called the Smithsonian of the West. True art aficionados won’t want to miss the San Diego Museum of Art, with its outstanding collection of Italian Renaissance and Dutch and Spanish baroque art. Theater-lovers will head for Balboa Park’s replica of London’s Old Globe, one of three venues staging everything from Broadway-bound productions to works-in-progress by regional playwrights.

Also encased within Balboa Park is San Diego’s highly praised zoo. It has 100 acres of land and more than 4,000 animal species. With its spotlight always on conservation, the zoo has some of the most elaborate animal habitats in zoo history and houses not only some of the world’s most rare and endangered birds, mammals and reptiles but more than 6,500 varieties of exotic plants. A short drive away, SeaWorld Adventure Park continues to evolve into one of the most fascinating water parks in history. Recently it has embarked on the most ambitious entertainment project in 40 years, a new killer whale show that took two years to piece together.

Sportsmen and women will find more recreation in San Diego than nearly any other California city. There are nearly 100 golf courses in the city and its environs, most notably Torrey Pines, site of the January Buick International, an event won by Tiger Woods four times. Racing season at the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club begins the last week of July, and runs through Labor Day. Del Mar Racetrack is the place to see and be seen on opening day with half the fans wearing beach attire and the other dressed to the nines in dresses, hats and gloves. The Club has been a fixture in Del Mar since 1937 when Bing Crosby stood at the gate greeting fans personally. And while it isn’t England or Argentina, the San Diego Polo Fields bring world-class polo to the area from May through October.

Foodies have a number of the country’s best restaurants within San Diego proper and its outskirts. One reason for so many gourmet options is the city’s proximity to the prodigious Chino Farms in Rancho Santa Fe, where chefs from all over the state line up to get the freshest produce. The bountiful harvest of this region with its year round temperate climate is ideal for growing almost anything.

Of course, San Diego has its own beach communities as well. Besides those within city limits including Pacific Beach, Mission Beach and Ocean Beach, there’s Solana Beach home of the Cedros Design District, a charismatic community that many consider the anti-mall. Very European in feel, saunter into small studios and houses converted into boutiques (85 at last count) rather than into large generic department stores to sift through treasures ranging from sculpture to home furnishings. Within San Diego’s city limits, La Jolla is another beach side enclave with shopping streets rather than malls and some of the best restaurants in the state. Often called the Southern California Riviera, La Jolla is a jewel of a village, home to some of the world’s best medical facilities, the University of California, San Diego and a full day’s worth of recreational and cultural activities.

Southern California is that rare mix of natural splendor and manmade wonders. Coupled with some of the most idyllic weather in the country it continues to be a favored destination by thousands who visit each year. Whether you choose to spend your time by the ocean with its myriad of white sandy beaches, nature preserves and alluring sea caves, or travel inland where the human touch is in evidence, this bona fide American experience is something not soon forgotten.

Southern California’s Treasures : nearby Relais & Chateaux properties