We filled up little plates with prosciutto and blue-cheese-stuffed mushrooms, tapenade on crostini and cheeses and brought them back to our too-cute-by-half room.īy accident, we stumbled on Summerland’s big thing to do at sunset-dog-walking on the beach-when we went to Lookout Park to watch the sun go down over the ocean. So I drove up alone and had a great, cheap BLT at Shacky’s Seaside, a low-key, vine-covered roadside cafe that seemed to function as a town square for the locals.Ĭynthia arrived in time for the inn’s afternoon snacks, which were several notches above what was needed to get by. Minimalists: Book at your own risk.Ĭynthia had to meet me at the inn because she’s an actor and she got a last-minute audition. But this is a more-is-more place, from dining room to lobby to guest rooms. I peeked into Room 2, and it looked slightly less goopy. But it was all cozy and filled with good cheer and little treats-the cassette player speaker in the bathroom, cranberry water in the fridge, magazines (inspired!). I counted 19 lighting fixtures, including in the bathroom. That was our room: every surface covered with floral wallpaper, floral fabrics and floral pictures and bows, though expensively done. This is a term I learned at UCLA from an art history professor who said the ancient Egyptians had it-fear of undecorated spaces. The decorating sense at the inn is horror vacui.
It’s the only room in the inn with two double beds, so the guest book in the room contained deeply felt testimonials from mother/daughters, sisters, best buds since sixth grade and couples celebrating their 30th and 35th anniversaries. As a bonus, she’s almost as big a fan of PBS’ “Antiques Roadshow” as I am.
Cynthia, a longtime Summerland shopper, already had a favorite shop there, so she was the perfect traveling companion. Since I’m used to paying flea market prices for my treasures, I wasn’t sure I’d buy anything on Summerland’s antique strip.
Then I read in one of my favorite decorating books that Summerland is among the author’s haunts-she being Rachel Ashwell of the much-copied “Shabby Chic” (country cottage) look, shops and books. I had recently overheard dealers at a flea market say that they sell their best stuff to the Summerland antique shops. My friend Cynthia and I decided that the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it village off the freeway five miles south of Santa Barbara would be perfect for a getaway focused on antiquing and gabbing. And then you realize that it takes a girlfriend to browse all of Summerland’s antique shops in a leisurely, respectful manner. The Inn on Summer Hill is so honeymoon-in-the-Poconos cutesy that you think you really should be there with a man. There’s something contradictory about a weekend escape in Summerland.
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