Clare Teal: Sunshine coast's birds of a feather tick all the right boxes

We lunched in the perfect and quaint Santa Barbara. Raymond Chandler, who called La Jolla 'a nice place – for old people and their parents', clearly had never had the pleasure of visiting the town Ronald Reagan once called home. But don't let that put you off. It's a beautiful place – and the food! Muddy lived in LA for some time as a teenager and has a real penchant for Mexican food. She ordered us both Tostadas. For this, you will need a huge deep-fried tortilla, which you fill with crisp salad, refried beans, salsa, tender spiced grilled chicken and lashings of guacamole and sour cream, accompanied by root beer – imagine fizzy Benylin.

We attempted to walk it off wandering round what we assumed to be a typically massive American supermarket. It was, in fact, a typical American chemist. Onwards, we wended our way through the Santa Ynez Mountains to Lompoc, the flower-seed growing capital of the world.

We pulled into San Simeon as the sun was setting. A complimentary upgrade resulted in an enormous room with patio doors leading to a view of a significantly wilder side of the Pacific Ocean.

In a corner of the room stood a huge wood-burner. Being in the throes of winter, we were encouraged to light a fire and use as much wood as we wanted. Within minutes, a hearty blaze roared in the hearth. We spent the next two hours sitting outside in T-shirts waiting for the room to cool down.

Tired and still full from lunch, we had the contents of the mini bar for dinner; this included a bag of most abysmal biscuits in Christendom, they tasted how I would imagine a dish-washer tablet might, leaving a rancid chemically overtone on the pallet which diminished slightly after the eighth or ninth go.