Well, our internet connection was absolutely terrible in the hotel last night and even worse this morning. In 12 minutes this morning I hadn't even been able to load a single webpage. It said I had an internet connection but was refusing to do anything. We finished the post last night by some miracle, but decided to put off posting for yesterday as well.
So day 8 began after the best sleep we've had on our trip, at George and Sue's. It also started with the best breakfast we've had on our trip – a feta cheese omelette, biscuits, and sausages. We had a very difficult time leaving them, they were wonderful hosts and I really enjoyed meeting them both.
We stopped for gas and a car wash on our way out of San Jose. Tom Tom guided us around the block once on our way to the highway. Well, it was either Tom Tom or Ian... Maybe the two of them conspired together to drive us around the block before finding our way onto the highway. Side note: having this GPS has been an absolute lifesaver. For all the times it has taken us around the block or the scenic route, or the long non-scenic route, or the direct route into heavy traffic, it always gets us there if we're patient and try (oh gosh do you have to try hard sometimes) to understand what it wants you to do. So thanks Dad, this was definitely a great gift!
Our first stop of the day was going to be Santa Cruz but we were running a bit behind schedule (as per our usual) and we knew we would be stopping a lot on the way. Only Ian and I can make a 3 hour drive take 6 hours (Gilligan and Skipper came close though). So we skipped Santa Cruz this trip (oh don't worry, we'll be back!) and went straight for the Monterey peninsula. We stopped at the Info Center there and grabbed some maps and brochures for things we wanted to visit (sometime) and then we took a walk on the pier. We saw sea lions swimming in the water alongside the pier, one was following me I'm sure, thinking that I would be willing to share my apple, which I had no intention of doing. I know better than to feed wild animals. I know it all seems innocent and fun, but by feeding them you encourage aggressive behaviour, and familiarize the animals to humans – they learn that we are a source of food and won't be appropriately cautious of human contact. Anyways, I wasn't sharing my apple and the young sea lion stopped following us when I threw the core away. We drove up the road a ways and walked out to a rocky outcropping where there must have been hundreds of them sunning themselves on the rocks. Some were enormous!
After this we drove past Cannery Row and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I'd really like to visit the aquarium here someday – I've checked out their web cams before. The scenery around Monterey is absolutely stunning, I've never quite seen anything like it. However, we picked up a brochure about movies and books that have been set here or filmed here and it's funny that I felt I'd never seen anything like this when it's featured in so many films! I must have seen some of them, I guess I just never really noticed. I'll have to pay closer attention from now on. We also did part of the 17 Mile Drive around the peninsula and Pebble Beach. I wish I appreciated golf more as it really was an amazing view and would be fantastic to play there I'm sure. We took so many pictures it will be hard to pick just a few to post!
We drove through Carmel-by-the-Sea and considered stopping for lunch but there was pretty much no available parking and looked a bit out of our meagre budget – they even have their own Tiffany & Co.! It was pretty there though. We carried on to Big Sur and stopped at the Lodge there for a sandwich and a coffee. Probably one of the best sandwiches I've ever had and it was just turkey on whole wheat bread, but the bread was so soft and fresh! My mouth is watering just thinking about it again!
The next 60-some miles of the trip are by far the most scenic and spectacular. We must have stopped at nearly every "vista point" and probably some "pull out"s along the way! How we're going to decide which of those pictures to use on the blog is beyond me. Really, words cannot describe the view along the coast, and the pictures hardly do justice to the scope of the whole view. You really just must see it for yourself. Let's leave it at that.
We arrived at our hotel around 6:30 – we left San Jose around 10AM... so that's like an 8.5 hour day to drive a 3.5 hour distance... But we enjoyed it!
Another culinary note – we had dinner in Cambria, just south of San Simeon, at the Main Street Grill. It's a cash-only, cafeteria-style, self-serve, fast foodish barbeque. Ian had ribs and I had a burger and they were absolutely delicious! Word of warning, one serving of fries is more than enough for 4 people I'm sure! We ordered a basket, thinking we could share, and we were right – we could have shared with a small village!! We had WAY too many fries for two people! We should have just shared a "small" order of fries, and even that would have been more than enough!
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