Solana Beach: Shop Central

My sister isn’t an antique, at least not yet, as I like to tease her. But antiquing is her passion, and she knows almost every store, mall and dealer from San Diego to Sacramento. Even so, when Linda announced that hidden treasures lie in the Solana Beach Cedros Design District, which bills itself as “North County San Diego’s hippest, hottest enclave of shops, galleries and designers,” I was skeptical. Solana Beach?

After a weekend visit last month, I was a believer. The district--a five-block stretch of downtown--feels like a combination of the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood and Bazaar del Mundo in Old Town San Diego. Vendors of handcrafted furniture, art, antiques, clothes, jewelry and accessories occupy imaginatively converted warehouses next door to interior designers with big-city clients--the kind who shop on Rodeo Drive. The prices here, however, are more reasonable.

The weekend began on a Friday afternoon with a drive from my home in L.A. County south toward San Diego, where Linda lives. My sister inherited her antiques gene from our mother, who was not about to miss this excursion, so I made reservations for Mom and me at a bed-and-breakfast in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, five minutes north of Solana Beach.

The Cardiff by the Sea Lodge is 10 years old but built to look like a historical house, all brown-shingled turrets and curving staircases. Each room has its own theme, and we took the Roosevelt, named for Teddy, not Franklin; a teddy bear greeted us from the four-poster queen bed. The room was pricey, $192 per night plus tax (others start at $126), but it had an additional queen sleeper. Bay windows overlooked the ocean. The only drawback, and a minor one at that: A hot tub was on the roof above us, and guests padding to and from it sounded like a herd of elephants.

The lodge’s owner, Jeannette Statser, recommended Charlie’s by the Sea, just down Coast Highway 101, for dinner. The dining room has angled windows that give the impression of the captain’s cabin on a small cruise ship. The three of us arrived in time to snag a table with a view of the sun setting over the Pacific.

Linda and Mom said their prime rib was very good. The lettuce in my Caesar salad, though, had seen better days, and my Cajun scampi with garlic-buttered linguine and capers was flavorful but a little too oily.

As we returned to the lodge, the heavens opened. Rain fell steadily all evening, providing one benefit: no elephants running to the hot tub above. I could hear the surf above the raindrops. The weather cleared in the morning. Jeannette’s friendly husband, James, set out breakfast (sweet rolls, fruit, cereal, juice and coffee, all included in the rate), which we savored with the view in our room. Linda joined us, and it was time to set sail for Solana Beach.

We skipped the beach and headed straight to the Cedros Design District, five blocks of Cedros Avenue south of Lomas Santa Fe Drive. Our first stop was the Antique Warehouse, once a roller rink. Now 101 merchants fill the space with an eclectic variety of art, antiques and junk that could take days to sort through. Cigar boxes from decades past, charming old-fashioned duck decoys with peeling paint, a 1940s flour sifter and grungy old cowboy boots stand next to cut crystal, vaseline glass, diamond jewelry and shelves stacked with Staffordshire stoneware. I know where to bring that piano bench from home, full of my grandmother’s sheet music, if I ever decide to sell it.

Mother bought a child’s pair of Dutch wooden shoes for her 2-year-old granddaughter, and Linda found a piece of sterling flatware to add to the set my grandmother left. I collect negritude, objects related to the African-American experience, but nothing outstanding turned up, so we moved on.

Cut & Dried Hardwood, a 22,000-square-foot warehouse, smelled of planed lumber and aromatic cedar. Towering lengths of seemingly every kind of wood were here: cherry, walnut, mahogany, birch and red oak stacked next to yellow pine, maple and alder. Polished planks of satinwood and granadillo were as expensive as antiques. I began to long for a house to furnish with handcrafted furniture, built-in cabinets and floor-to-ceiling paneling.

The Artisans’ Market across the street was the place for fabrics, wall hangings and brilliant textiles from Central America. The owner showed me a custom-designed piece created from four molas, cutout-cloth embroidery done by the Indians in the San Blas region of Panama, framed with lengths of hand-woven Guatemalan fabric. The effect was stunning.

The three of us paused for a good lunch at the Wild Note Cafe. My platter of hummus, baba ghannouj, Kalamata olives and spicy, slightly sweet walnuts was terrific, and so were the rolled beef tacos with guacamole that Mom and Linda ordered.

We soldiered on to Out of the Blue, which specializes in decorative accessories featuring mermaids and seashells, and the Leaping Lotus, with all manner of clothing, crafts and furniture from Morocco, China, Japan, West Africa, Mexico and other locales. Embroidered dresses from Oaxaca, Mexico ($59), were especially good buys, as were jackets embroidered by Hmong from Thailand ($39).

At the Cedros Trading Co., a marketplace loss was our gain. Merchants had lost their lease for the barn-like building and were liquidating their assets at a 50% discount. By the time I was through, my car trunk held two carved wooden masks from the Ivory Coast, a chief’s stool from Zimbabwe, a small square of carpet from Turkestan, a brass idol from Nepal and a sewn shell bracelet from Indonesia. The haul cost less than $350. Several birthdays and a college graduation gift could be crossed off my shopping list.

That night in Cardiff, we had charbroiled fish tacos for dinner at a Mexican restaurant called Las Olas (the Waves) on Coast Highway 101 and watched out the window as a pair of ducks played tag near the San Elijo Lagoon.

Back at the inn, we enjoyed one final ocean sunset and the comfortable exhaustion of a shopping spree well done. I went to sleep with the fading whistle of a train playing a soft counterpoint against the endless percussion of the waves.

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Budget for Two

Cardiff by the Sea Lodge,

two nights $424.40

Dinner, Charlie’s by the Sea $62.72

Lunch, Wild Note Cafe $19.83

Dinner, Las Olas $9.03

Gas $30.00

FINAL TAB $545.98

* Cardiff by the Sea Lodge, 142 Chesterfield Drive, Cardiff-by-the-Sea, CA 92007; telephone (760) 944-6474, Internet https://www.cardifflodge.com.