Santa Rosa, California

Santa Rosa is bigger than many of the places we’ve seen over the last few days, with a bustling downtown and lots of stores/restaurants/etc spread over the city. It has a very California feel about it, with wide streets, palm trees, single-story buildings, etc. Not to mention the people, who also look very Cali to me. I very much like that Mexican culture is so visible and influential in California, even as far north as Santa Rosa.

Hotel in SR has a Spanish villa look, is way above our normal price range, and maybe just a little pretentious. Very nice lobby, huge, comfortable rooms. Checked in, unpacked and immediately to Best Buy, where we picked up a mobile hotspot. Very good news for the tech/web junkies among us. For loyal blog readers, this means that our updates will be much more frequent now that we can get online whenever/wherever [Ed. note: Or maybe not so much, given that I'm posting this on day 61 of our trip. I’m doing what I can.]

From BB to La Texanita for Mexican food. Burritos (veg for LVL, lengua for me) and lots of chips and salsa. In the signed poster on the wall, Guy Fierri calls it “off the chain Mexican food.” We agree, as do tons of locals (most of them Spanish-speaking). This is the kind of place DC lacks.