I'd been to Catalina for boy scout camp a couple times when I was younger, but I'd never been to Avalon, where we would be staying. It took me a while to find a decent looking hotel online, but what I found was pretty good, if somewhat overpriced. For a few months of my Hong Kong sojourn, I lived near a beach and sometimes spent time on the roof, watching the boats go back and forth and the weather change (this was also the only way I could get any time alone). I decided I wanted similar views for our Catalina stay, so I sprung for a room with a balcony overlooking the ocean. This is what I saw the first time I walked out onto the balcony:
The balcony turned out to be a good choice. I spent a lot of time sitting out on the balcony, surfing the internet, working and/or listening to music. The view also made up for the fact that our room wasn't much larger than our walk-in closet at home (I had been expecting something much larger, based on the pictures on the hotel's website). Anyway, the balcony was nice for sunrises and sunsets:
Notice the fog in the last couple of pictures. It arrived late in the morning of our second day there, and appeared again on the morning of the third day. It didn't burn off until late in the day on the second day, and we left before it burned off on the third day. This put a damper on our plans to see the interior of the island, since we wouldn't have been able to see anything had we taken one of the available tours.
We did pay a visit to the local botanical gardens on the second day, however. It was during our search for the gardens that I slipped and fell, banging up my knee pretty badly in the process. Anyway, we finally got to the gardens, but they weren't what we were expecting. When I hear "garden", I usually think of flowers and the like. What we saw, however, was much different:
This is my favorite of the photos I took on the trip:
After we finished at the gardens, we went to lunch at Jack's, a local restaurant that appeared to specialize in breakfast foods. After a fattening feast of breakfast fare including eggs benedict, Portuguese sausage, biscuits and gravy, and hash browns, we went back to the hotel and passed out for the rest of the afternoon. We only went out again to go to dinner at El Galleon, another local restaurant which appeared to be a bit more upscale. This turned out to be a bad idea, as the food was both the most expensive and the worst of our trip. Remind me to go back to El Galleon if I'm ever in the mood for fettucine alfredo soup again.
Our ferry back to the mainland left at 1pm on the third day, and we didn't do much that morning, other than walk by the casino-turned-movie theater and down the shore.
Catalina was fairly relaxing, but I felt like the trip was a bit of a bust. The fog was a problem, and there really wasn't much to do in Avalon. While that was kind of the point, I had been expecting more excitement and entertainment options. As much as I'd like to see the seals, buffalo and other wildlife in the interior of the island, I doubt we'll go back any time soon. I'm still glad we got away for a few days, though.
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