article_snippet: My teenage kids (Molly, 15, Dylan, 17) demand something a bit more exciting than sand and sea from family summer holidays nowadays.
article_snippet: The mist that rolls in off the sea and shrouds the Golden Gate Bridge most days can sometimes linger, but Dylan, 17) never stayed still long enough to get cold.
article_snippet: We took a rare detour off Route 1 to the Danish settlement of Solvang, a sort of cutesy yet sinister re-creation of Denmark in the California sun, full of pastry shops and Chinese tourists.
article_snippet: Floundering on the beach are gigantic elephant seals - enormous specimens of blubbery ugliness hooting and honking and generally having a riot at the edge of the sea.
article_snippet: The body-builders and gymnasts of Muscle Beach and the roller-blading buskers of Venice are highly entertaining, and you can actually walk everywhere.
article_snippet: A Sunday trip to Universal Studios was great fun, too, for the rides and a look at a real working film set on A Sunday trip to Universal Studios day off.
article_snippet: And what a beach it is - three-and-a-half miles of uncrowded white sand known as Surf City.
article_snippet: It was thrilling to watch the guys surfing along on the waves.
article_snippet: Later we watched the sun go down over the pier from the comfort of the superb Duke's Restaurant, before ambling back along a beach glowing with fire-pits and shrouded in barbecue smoke - preparing we for the horrors of donning fleeces again for the journey home.