San Ysidro Ranch

Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh were married at San Ysidro Ranch on 31 August 1940. Katharine Hepburn drove them there, and the ceremony took three minutes. The party took longer: it ran so late that the judge was kept from going home with the offer of a drink, which he accepted. Before the film stars came the fruit. The ranch harvested an average of 300,000 oranges and 100,000 lemons a year, and its sandstone packing house of 1889 is now the Stonehouse restaurant. The 38 cottages stand among gardens in the foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains, each behind its own gate, with a stone fireplace inside and a hot tub out on the patio. In one, the sitting room rises to bare timber beams and French doors open onto the lawn. Between the cottages, roses climb over arches and an old wooden cart sits heaped with flowers, as though the ranch had simply changed crops.

Recommended for couples, honeymooners above all, who want a fire of their own and a gate to close behind them; John and Jacqueline Kennedy spent their honeymoon here in 1953. Breakfast is included at the Stonehouse, where the kitchen cooks from the ranch's own gardens, so the old packing house still handles what the ranch grows. The terrace is roofed in reed and strung with small lights, with a stone fireplace among the white tablecloths and the ocean in the distance. Seventeen miles of trails run through the ranch, more walking than most honeymoons call for, and Butterfly Beach is about ten minutes away by car. Under the Stonehouse, the Secret Cellar holds tastings from about 16,000 bottles, enough to have kept the judge at the party a good deal longer.