My friends and I had been trying to go to San Luis Obispo (SLO) for a while. It’s only a 4-hour drive from Los Angeles, but something always came up when we planned to go. This January, I had zero plans for the 3-day MLK Day weekend, so the week before, I suggested we go to SLO, and my friends Katherine and Anica agreed!
DAY 1
We got up early and made breakfast, then hit the road a little before 9am on Sunday morning. There wasn’t that much traffic and we made it to Pismo Beach around noon, a little beach town south of San Luis Obispo.
We ate lunch at Honeymoon Café, which had a pretty extensive and healthy menu. We walked around the few blocks of the town and ventured into some cute little shops. I had heard of Old West Cinnamon Rolls when researching SLO, but we didn’t plan on stopping in. I pointed it out down the street and Katherine and Anica were hyped to go.
The shop has Walmart lighting and no decor, but looks aren’t everything and you must go!! It’s very popular and had a line to order the whole time we were there. The cinnamon rolls were cheap compared to my LA dessert standards, and there was a wide variety! Katherine got the one with the cream cheese frosting on top, Anica got a plain one, and I got the pecan one. I bought a little cup of frosting to go on the side, and it was a good choice.
Then, we headed out to find somewhere to take photos in the Pismo Beach sand dunes. After a while, we finally parked at the base parking lot of Pacific Dunes Ranch RV Resort, then walked up the stairs to the rv park and found an entrance to the sand dunes. There weren’t too many other people, just some friends sledding in the sand and you could hear the whirring of the ATVs in the distance. We didn’t walk too far in to take photos, but the dunes went as far as we could see along the coast. I was obsessed with these outfits from Katherine’s closet! We might have looked strange and over-dressed walking to the dunes, but the photos were worth it!
After, we drove to Avila Beach, just north of Pismo Beach, to meet my friend Tori to shoot for sunset. Unfortunately, the sunset was pretty cloudy, and it was super windy and cold on the coast, but we still got some cool photos.
It got darker and colder, so we decided to go check into our motel. It was the Avenue Inn San Luis Obispo, it was just a little motel, nothing sketchy, nothing fancy. We booked one room with two beds for one night for $118. We unpacked for a few minutes before walking to downtown for dinner. Downtown SLO is really cute. It reminds me of Santa Barbara, except there’s more than one main street. We had heard good things about Firestone Grill, and you could tell it was the place to be, as there was a line out the door. Fortunately, the line went quickly. Katherine and I ordered the famous tri-tip sandwich and we all shared French fries which were all so good!
We followed up dinner with boba for dessert at Sweetie Cup Tea House and walked back to our motel. With full stomachs, we went to bed pretty early, no clubbing in SLO!!
DAY 2
The next morning, we grabbed a quick breakfast at the motel and checked out before heading to the Madonna Inn, this little quirkhy fairytale inn that I had seen online for a while. You can stay in one of their whimsical rooms, but I think it’s kind of expensive. You drive up this road and park in the big parking lot. We ended entering at the main restaurant area and got some more breakfast at the Copper Cafe. The service was slow and everything was expensive, I don’t personally think it was worth it. However, I do want to go back just to get a slice of their famous pink champagne cake! After we finished, we walked around. As the pictures on the internet promised, all the décor was pink and we took some cool photos at the bar. I want to go back and eat at their other restaurant, Alex Madonna’s Gold Rush Steak House for the ambiance, which wasn’t open for brunch.
After, we went north to Morro Rock beach, which basically just has this massive rock. It was overcast and cold, but again I made Anica and Katherine dress up again, and we got some more cool photos! We explored the beach a little bit, but headed back to downtown SLO and checked out Scout Coffee, which was all over Instagram. We walked around town a bit, and then met up with our friend from college, Megan, a SLO native.
We ended up eating acai bowls from Seeds, another cute café across the street from Scout. Megan gave us a little tour of downtown and took us to the gum wall (this one is more gross than the one in Seattle) and some other streets we didn’t go down. Along the way, we also met up with one of Anica’s high school friends who now goes to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. We couldn’t leave without going to SLO Donut Company, so we stopped to pick up some donuts, then started to drive back to Los Angeles.
It poured rain as we left, but things calmed down by the time we arrived in Santa Barbara for dinner with another friend, Sabrina. We got some wood-fired pizzas at Lucky Penny, then continued on back to Orange and then I drove back to Los Angeles.
Overall, I really enjoyed SLO! I wish we had an extra day or two there. I definitely want to go back to the sand dunes when it’s sunnier. I’d also want to check out the hiking trails and some other beaches like Montana de Oro State Park.
Pin it!
