Catalina Island

Catalina Island's Jovial Gingerbread Confections

The Catalina Island Company is behind the quintet of beautifully baked casas, boats, and famous hotels.

Catalina Island Company

A GINGERBREAD HOUSE ... is a gingerbread house is a gingerbread house, right? There are the gumdrops on the roof and the candy canes along the little fence and the other standard details we've come to expect of this ubiquitous holiday season sweet. And yet? Creative bakers are forever changing up the form while trying out new gingerbread-based innovations, all while saluting real buildings and places. The Catalina Island Company is doing just that this holiday season with five festive gingerbread creations, spicy structures that are now on display at locations around the history-laden island. Do you remember the beautiful Hotel St. Catherine, a long-ago landmark that opened in Avalon over a century ago (and shuttered in the 1960s)? You can now view a gingerbread St. Catherine in the lobby of the Hotel Atwater in Avalon. Over 120 pounds of flour went into this fabulous fantasy, as well as a pound of ginger, a pound of cinnamon, and 23 dozen eggs.

OTHER NOSHABLE NOTABLES... currently charming visitors and locals around Avalon? Look for Santa's Sweet Sailboat at the Avalon Grille, a gingerbread-cool South Seas Palapa at Harbor Reef Restaurant, the Villa Park Bungalette, a picturesque ode to an early style of Avalon abode-building, at the Pavilion Hotel, and Magnificent Mt. Ada, which can be found at, you guessed it, its beautiful namesake. Are you planning a by-boat jaunt to the isle idyll before the 2019 holidays bid their farewell? You can see all of these treat-tastic works of art in well under a day, and also take in some iconic Avalon sights along the way, too. And, truly, is there a place in California that's more confection-able than Catalina? It looks as though it should be made of gingerbread, or at least created in sand castle form, all year long.

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