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Mar Vista Cottages - Press Comment
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Sunset
“Top 25 Trips with a Twist”
“Pluck some veggies from the organic garden, pick up the basket of freshly laid eggs at your cottage door, and enjoy a picnic dinner on the lawn watching the sun disappear into the Pacific”.
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Contra Costa Times
"A cozy seaside cottage has always been in my mind — not too far from home, close to the ocean, with room to breathe. Mar Vista Cottages fits my picture perfectly."
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Organic Gardening
“The vacation retreat’s natural setting is certainly a draw for visitors, but the property’s most compelling feature is a fantastic organic kitchen garden that Mar Vista proprietors, Tom and Renata Dorn, plant for their guests.”
“The kitchen garden is also filled with U-Pick flowers ,including incredibly fragrant sweet peas that guests are encouraged to cut for impromptu centerpieces and bouquets.”
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Coastal Living
“the haze of night slowly gives way to the warmth of first light. It’s time to rise. Shuffling into the kitchen, a sleepy vacationer sees a flyer under the door. It reads, “Still-warm eggs just out of the nest are waiting for you on the broom peg on your porch! Enjoy.” As promised, a small basket brims with eggs of varying pastel hues. The cottages at Mar Vista offer the freshest wake-up call along the West Coast.
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Press Democrat
"The Simple Life"
Before they arrive, guests receive a list of seasonal goodies that will be
ready to pick and prepare. Renata keeps a few cookbooks and recipes on hand
but the timid are reminded that most veggies don't need to be dressed in
culinary finery. It's amazing what a little garlic and olive oil will do.
While other newlyweds indulge in room-service and Zagat-rated restaurant
meals capped by three-figure bills, this San Francisco couple chose to ease
into married life in a cozy cottage at Anchor Bay along the unhurried coast
of southern Mendocino County.
Each day of their recent honeymoon, Paul Riley and Katie Petrucione engaged
in one of the more sensuous chores of everyday life: They cooked together, a
cooperative ritual of quality time spent quietly conversing over tempting
aromas.
There was fresh rosemary and chives for steak marinade. Salads of bitter
greens like arugula tossed with sorrel and vibrantly colored radicchio.
Mashed potatoes with sweet scallions. A bunch of sweet peas coiling up among
the vegetables in the garden made a fragrant flower arrangement by their
bed.
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Fodor’s Travel Book
“Escape to Nature Without Roughing It”
“Tom and Renata Dorn, whose background is in luxury hotels, have put the fundamentals of a typical high end lodging into a low key property. Every bed has a top quality mattress, high thread count cotton sheets, a down comforter, and a fresh duvet cover; bathrooms have thick terry towels, and every room is spotless, right down to the windows, a rarity in coastal California. Neither the furniture in your living room nor the dishes in your kitchen match, but like a second home that’s been in the family for generations, the place exudes happiness and calm.
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Mendocino Country Life Cover Feature
“Farm Vacation at Mar Vista Cottages”
You’ve heard of Agritourism -- Farms adding lodging to diversify. Well, here is a story about lodging adding a farm! Throughout their stay Mar Vista guests are encouraged to self harvest in the gardens and enjoy the just laid eggs from Renata and Tom’s small flock of hens. The whole experience is extraordinarily pleasurable because it draws the guests back to the heart of the simple life, which after all the layers have been peeled away, is astonishingly intense!
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The Napa Valley Register
"Coasting with Kids"
Before dinner . . . the kids had experienced a moment of disorientation
looking around the cottage: "Mommy, where's the TV?" Katy pretended to
look around and then pointed out the window, overlooking the garden, and
said, "It's right here. It's on the Garden Channel now." This became a
theme throughout our stay. Our three nights there gave two weary parents a
chance to relax away from computers and phones, and to see our children with fresh eyes.
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San Francisco Magazine, first time
“Sensational Beach Getaways”
“The carefully restored 1930s Mar Vista Cottages feel like a better version of their old selves, with big windows and down-covered beds. An unmarked beach down the hill ... is a slice of he North Coast the way it used to be.”
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San Francisco Magazine, second time
“Great Escapes, Spectacular Ways to Leave the World Behind”
“Mar Vista Cottages where a weekend stay in a sweet little fishing shack with a picture window looking out ot the ocean, will make you aspire to a simpler life.”
San Francisco Magazine third time,
“Going Coastal, 33+ spectacular & undiscovered getaways”
“Our managing editor, who does double duty as travel editor: “There was one place we already knew would make the cut for our getaways guide. I disappear to Mar Vista Cottages a couple times a year just to read and cook and stare at the ocean. The cottages are the simplest thing you could imagine, but I have a soft spot for their retro details--and the hens that lay eggs for my breakfast every morning.”
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Sunset Magazine
“Sonoma Escape”
The rugged stretch of land that runs along Sonoma County's coast inspires grand passions. From the pocket coves of Bodega Bay and windswept bluffs of Sea Ranch to inland pine-covered peaks and ocean-carved sea stacks, the area is marked by layers of fog, gulls, sweetgrass, and wildness.
It's a place where you can tidepool for hours in precious solitude or ride thrilling, frigid waves; a place where delicious wine and cheese are made carefully, lovingly, by hand.
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Diablo Magazine
“Let the Fur Fly”
“No Time for Paris? Here are four local lodges
that’ll roll out the Red Carpet for your Hound”
Former fishing cabins in the banana belt of the Mendo coast, co-owned by a veteran of the Four Seasons and Manka’s, Mar Vista has an open door policy for dogs of all sizes and 12 kitchen equipped retro crash pads that are cleaner than clean.
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Sunset Magazine Best of the West
“Fresh for the Picking”
The joys of the harvest aren’t just for farmers anymore. Mar Vista Cottages on California’s Mendocino Coast, has a 2,500 square foot organic vegetable garden nestled among guest cottages equipped with kitchens. Visitors pick to their hearts’ content then prepare their own meals with the bounty.”
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