Our final morning at the Fleur Noire Hotel was a very relaxing one. At 8am we wandered over to The Pantry and helped ourselves to the usual.
This hotel has been a real find and one that we have all approved of. Great location and just a lovely vibe.
Karen ate her breakfast by the pool, but I wanted to enjoy mine in the cool of our room and on an upright chair. I joined her outside immediately afterwards as we lay on sunbeds in the shade by the pool, overlooking the mountains beneath a cloudless sky. It was horrid.
Around 10am we retreated back inside, showered and packed up. By 10.45am we had checked out and were loading the car.
I needed to fill up with petrol for the journey and said I would stop at the next gas station. Our first, and only, opportunity was 17 miles away and the gauge showed I had 101 miles until empty. It was already over 100°F and we had the air conditioning on full blast. My range was dropping at the rate of three miles for every mile we travelled, so I was relieved when we reached the gas station on the Morongo land at the outlet mall where we were stopping. The station was rammed as it proudly proclaimed itself to have the cheapest gas in California, and it was certainly at least $1.50 a gallon cheaper than anywhere else I had seen.
We wandered across to what we discovered were the outer outlets. Karen and Neil were both nervous about leaving the car with all our luggage in it after the incident in San Francisco a few years back, so we carried our valuables with us in our rucksacks. Karen and I, as usual, headed to the Columbia store where suitably modest purchases were made.
A relocation of both the car and ourselves was then made to the main outlet mall. It was somewhat chaotic trying to park because it was the Independence Day national holiday. Eventually, though, we found a space in the full sun and walked into the open-air, baking-hot outlets. Karen and I headed straight for the wonderfully cool food pavilion to get drinks and a snack. We had arranged to meet Neil there and quickly decided it was simply too hot for shopping, so we just waited at a table.
Once it was 15 minutes past our agreed meeting time, I messaged Neil and discovered he was still in a lengthy queue to pay for a bargain he had found. Eventually he turned up and we headed back to the car.
Neil fancied an In-N-Out Burger for lunch, so we drove back to where it was situated next to the gas station.
Karen decided to stay in the car whilst Neil and I went to investigate the extremely busy restaurant. Unbeknown to any of us, when I walked away with the key in my pocket the car automatically locked, trapping Karen inside. She couldn’t open a window or anything, and the sun was blazing down. She started to panic before realising she could message me, and I returned immediately. She said she felt just like one of those poor dogs who get locked in cars on hot days.
To make up for what was a genuine accident, neither Neil nor I complained when she requested that we use the Starbucks drive-through next door.
We then continued our drive to the townhouse we had booked in San Diego. The route Waze sent us on seemed a little cross-country for a while, but eventually we joined the Interstate.
Getting into the townhouse was a good reverse example of an escape room. To be able to park in the garage we first had to get through the side gate and then enter another code to unlock the front door. Once inside, the garage remote then had to be located. It had been cunningly hung on the far side of a large vase, which stumped us for a while. Having found it, we then had to retrace all our steps so we could finally open the garage door and enter via a completely different door.
Karen was happy with her first impressions of the house as we settled in and made a cuppa with the kettle—that alone made her very happy. It is a two-storey townhouse built above the garage. With its very high ceilings, there are a lot of stairs to climb each time, especially up to the bedrooms.
Tonight’s plan involved buying food for breakfast and the next eight mornings, so once we had decided upon Target it seemed churlish not to have dinner at the Outback, literally within walking distance.
As usual, we all studied the menu before proceeding to order exactly what we always have. And very good it was too.
We then went next door to Target, which—and you may need to be sitting down to read this—had an upstairs! We didn’t investigate quite that far as we only wanted to buy food and drink, yet somehow still managed to spend far too long doing so.
Back at the house, Karen made some sandwiches for our planned picnic at the zoo tomorrow before we retired for the night.
