The Golden Coast

California invented a particular kind of American glamour, sunlit, unhurried, slightly theatrical, and the towns that invented it are still open for business. The Golden Coast of this edition is not the wild north but the civilized south, the stretch from San Diego Bay to Santa Barbara where the missions came first, the railroads and the movie money came after, and the resorts have been receiving winter visitors since the eighteen eighties.

These places age well because they were built for the long run. The great wooden hotel on Coronado has been the reason to cross the bay since 1888, Santa Barbara rebuilt itself in red tile a century ago and has held the line since, and Beverly Hills still runs the old script, written before the city itself existed, of breakfast meetings and afternoon shopping and dinners that are also performances. None of it is new. All of it works.

The pieces in this edition go to San Diego from the water up, to Coronado and the hotel that explains it, to Santa Barbara between the mountains and the sea, and to Beverly Hills for the version grown adults actually enjoy. The through line is the season, since this coast does its best work from October through April, when the light goes gold and the summer crowds are back at their desks.

Fly into the small airports when you can, drive the coast road instead of the freeway at least once, and dress slightly better than the forecast requires, which is the local custom. The Golden Coast has been performing this show for a century and a half. Take a good seat.