Carmel, CA

Sunday 7th July

Mark and I ventured out for a beach walk before the 8.30 am breakfast. We headed down Ocean Ave towards the beach and then southwards along Scenic Drive. This reminded us of our south coast walks from Broulee around Mossy Point and on to Tomakin. Carmel is an interesting mix of ‘Hansel and Gretel’ meets Angela Lansbury’s ‘Murder, She Wrote’. It felt like we were decades from San Francisco rather than the 3hrs we had taken to get here. There were two main ‘take aways’ from this early morning walk:
~ More dogs than people take early walks and…
~ The spectacular coastal homes here are much more luxurious than those from back at our south coast.

Breakfast picked up where pre dinner drinks left off though. The same folk were back gathered around the fire put sharing more interesting stories and their take on the previous nights dining experience.

We were having a great time chatting here but had to drag ourselves away to get on the road to view the ’17 mile Drive’ before it got too busy. We spent a few hours meandering along this route and eventually stopped for lunch at ‘Roys’ at The Spanish Bay Inn, just one of the luxury golf courses in the area. From there we headed on to Monterey and to Macy’s, yet again, before turning to drive back along the 17 mile coastal track towards Carmel.

5.30 pm saw all the same faces gathered around the fire pit for wine and cheese again. More interesting stories were shared before we all headed of on our separate paths for dinner. We headed to a local Italian restaurant that served quality, home style Italian food. We were in bed by 10 which suited as we had a big day following that involved a 6 hr drive down to LA.