La Jolla: Wayfarer Pastries and Calumet Park

While staying for three months in La Jolla, the northern part of San Diego, we have spent a few slower weekend mornings getting pastries at a bakery called Wayfarer, in a neighborhood known as Bird Rock. We then make the short walk down to Calumet park, a small pocket park on a cliff overlooking the ocean in La Jolla.

The park is a small green space, enough for kids to run a little but not much more. But the cliffside view makes up for the size. It is the perfect for a slow weekend morning. They also do free yoga in the park here which seems like it would be fantastic and soothing given the setting.

The pastries at Wayfarer are all so good. The use their flakey croissant dough to make not only croissants and chocolate croissants but also cinnamon buns, and a pastry called Kouign Amman (Kouign: sounds like queen, and originating in France). It is made out of croissant dough which is rolled into a cinnamon bun and topped with a vanilla cream and sugar and then brûléed.  It is quite good, but my favorite is either the regular croissant or the croissant style cinnamon bun. They also make really good English muffins, which makes me wonder how they compare to the English muffins at the Model bakery that we heard so much about in Sonoma.

We also lucked out seeing some phenomenal surfing here. One morning there were dozens and dozens of surfers taking on these long rolling waves. There were other surfers milling about the park either finishing up their surfing for the morning or debating whether to surf now or later in the day when the tide was lower and the waves potentially bigger. We learned that there's a web cam here where surfers can see the wave conditions and decide if they want to go surfing or not.

If you’re in the area stopping at Wayfarer and then a stroll over to Calumet makes for a nice relaxed morning and a great way to start to the day, and you may catch a few surfers!

A Relaxed Morning in La Jolla:

• Pastries at Wayfarer: regular Croissant and the Cinnamon Bun, but they're all good (a sleeve of English Muffins to go).
• Calumet Park: eat your Wayfarer pastries with a view
• Watch the surfers
• Yoga in the park