We are staying with Tom in Capitola. We have only just met him, but hit it off in an instant.

Sonia spends hours chatting about business continuity, her new hobby sparked off by three years in the hot seat of our landlord stuff.

As it happens, in addition to emergencies, Tom is also involved in SF’s scene and we spend a lovely evening in his hot tub. We relish local gossip, and how he arranged to meet up his virtual SM friends, only to discover they lived in a neighbouring Santa Cruz pad. With a dungeon, no less, now sadly closed down.

Also in Santa Cruz, we spot Shoe Fetish store and dash across the road to have a look. Sadly, merchandise does not correspond to the name by any stretch of imagination.

We look for a good cuppa and find it at Lulu, together with friendly folks and complimentary Wi-Fi.

Last but not least on our Santa Cruz agenda is a visit to Verve Coffee Roasters. We scouted the little syphon coffee brewing roasters come coffee house and cannot wait to try it. We turn up at Verve just to find out that almost everyone is off to the International Barrista Competition. Scott, their wholesale director, kindly gives us a private demo, though. In a private show of coffee alchemy, he preps his coffee, then water, then burners, bulbs, cold cloth, ice… to finally present us with the brew. The coffee smells potent and nice, we do pick up some bitterness, though, a sure sign of overbrewing or bean fault. Unscathered, Scott explains that it takes ten warm-up brews to make a perfect syphon cup! Argh, we knew there is a catch… Syphon brewing looks spectacular, and is a lot of fun, but sadly not an ad-hoc operation, and a little too risky to employ commercially (maybe private parties?). Still, we love Verve’s coffee, and the fact they are the only other coffee house we have seen on our travels that also brews coffee in the French Press, Coffee, Cake & Kink -style.

We can’t wait to try syphon brew again, back in London, at Square Mile.

Travelling south, we stop in the little town of Carmel on little more than a hunch. Among its many galleries, we reckon, there surely is some erotic art.

We chance on the Vanguard Gallery right next to Clint Eastwood’s pub. Clint is a good landlord, we hear, and loves the merchandise. Vanguard, in turn, appreciate peace and quiet enough to be painting a “Gran Torino” portrait for Carmel’s ex-mayor, best known as a movie star.

We are in our travelling guise and feel the dust of the road amidst Carmel’s upmarket visitors. Our know-how, however, soon does its stuff as we “pick all the interesting pieces” from Vanguard’s erotic art, ourselves amazed to see fabulous artists unbeknown to us.

We round the day off at Nepenthe, Big Sur’s culinary gem. We have the most beautiful apple crumble, and spend a great hour chatting to Rosie. When not waitressing at the restaurant, she’s a fire eater at the nearby Esalen. Every night 1am-3am, the exlusive retreat opens its door to the public so anyone can bask in the moonlight in its cliff-hanging spa. Reservations, however, are essential and not even our charm gets us past the golem at the gate.

We spend the night camping amidst the cliffs, sea lions talking below and humming birds keeping us company over breakfast. Just before we hit the iconic US-1, we catch a sight of migrating gray whales, headed for Alaska.

We head the opposite way, down to the City of Angels.