The Houseguest & the Hair Band

Los Angeles, California


Billy and I are back home after an overnight visit to Santa Barbara. Our friends, Gwen and Henry live there; having moved away from our neighborhood, back a little over three years ago. It's fun having friends in Santa Barbara. But, frankly, it was more fun when they lived nearby. The joke back then was that if we had too much to drink, we could crawl home. They lived, if not in crawling distance, certainly within walking distance. Not that we ever had too much to drink. Not that we ever, in any way, drank to excess. Not that we . . . Oh forget it. Here's the drill on that front. Many the time, we lingered over our martinis at their home, calling to postpone dinner reservations. Usually we were going out for sushi. And, there were also the dinners at our homes. I clearly remember the night that we lingered around our round teak table outside, enjoying good wines into the early morning hours. It was warm out, and lovely to linger after dinner. Henry remarked that we could very well lose New Orleans, if the anticipated Hurricane Katrina did its worst the following day. Talk about a calm before a storm.


Alas, our friends uprooted and moved to Santa Barbara. And since we can no longer crawl home, we get to enjoy their hospitality and beautiful home on an overnight mini-break. We spent Sunday up in Santa Ynez Valley, tasting wine and buying Danish sausage at El Rancho Market. Back at their home, we enjoyed more wine (even I'm starting to think that this smacks of overindulgence), and a lovely dinner prepared by Gwen. And finally, in a haze of good food, good wine, and outstanding company, we retired to our guestroom.


Now here's the thing about guestrooms. Ever stay somewhere (like at our house), where the guestroom has all the hand-me-downs from the master? Where you find the towels that didn't quite work in the master bath, and the odd tables serving as nightstands? Ever looked in the closet to discover where they stuffed all the stuff that won't fit in their other closets? Well, Gwen and Henry's guestroom isn't like that. It is, in a word, perfect. Perfect design, perfect bed, perfect linens, towels, etc. But even in a room that reeks of perfection, you can't always expect to find what you forgot to bring. In this instance, I forgot to bring a hair band. What's the big deal, you are probably thinking. Well, I have shoulder-length hair and am used to pulling it up and out of my way when I sleep. And we all know how hard it is to skip out, even for one night, on a long-standing habit. So, I turned my overnight bag inside out. No hair band. I looked in my purse. Nothing. I thoroughly rummaged around in my make-up kit. Nada. No hair band. So I gave up. I clipped my hair up with an alligator clip (not something you can really wear into bed), and proceeded to wash my face. Hmmm. Kinda needed a wash cloth, so I opened the top drawer and Voila! Along with everything else a guest could need, and then some, guess what I found. You got it -- a sealed-in-plastic, brand spanking new hair band.


We've stayed in a lot of swanky places over the last few decades. To illustrate this, I ask you to visualize a room on stilts over the water, in Bora Bora. But I think my favorite hotel/resort is right here in California. It is Auberge du Soleil, located in the Napa Valley. Surely it's about the amenities, but it is most likely also that we've always had such a great time up there in Napa, where we often cap a day of wine tasting and shopping at Dean & DeLuca by stopping for root beer floats at A&W. But even in mind of Auberge du Soleil, I have to tell you that I can't think of any place we've stayed that would have provided me with exactly what I needed, without asking, as the guestroom at Gwen and Henry's did. I highly recommend it, should you be passing through Santa Barbara in the near future. Don't forget the Danish sausage. And, thanks for reading my post.