Monterey, California, April 18, 2024
Although we leave for Italy a week from Saturday, we decided to travel to California to attend a good friend’s 75th birthday dinner; at our age, we don’t want to miss too many such “once in a lifetime” occasions! A long weekend, with a bit of fun before the festivities..what’s not to like?
Newark airport felt crowded, but we made it through security in record time and were soon sitting in the spacious, quiet, and very comfortable United Club having a nice breakfast. It beat the hell out of buying a two-week old turkey sandwich for the plane.
The flight was comfortable and not too late; once we overcame the lousy signage at SFO, we were soon on the air train headed for the Rental Car Center. And within three minutes of walking in, we were pulling out in a very large and blingy Genesis G80 EV (I’d booked a Tesla, but they were all gone). It was extremely comfortable, obviously designed to compete with the Mercedes S and BMW 5 series cars (our car probably retailed for 85k). It did feel a bit like an old-style American boat, though, with rather sloppy steering and a very cushy ride with little road feel.
If the car was kind of nice, the traffic wasn’t. Trying to get anywhere near San Francisco at rush hour is obviously a bad idea, and we pulled onto the freeway at 4:30. Interstate 280 wasn’t too bad, but as soon as we turned onto Route 17 going toward the coast, the road turned into a parking lot. The traffic cleared a bit then, and things moved along for a while as we went over the Santa Cruz Mountains, but as soon as things slowed again, Google Maps routed us onto narrow, twisting mountain roads as we descended toward Santa Cruz. There was another 15 minute delay just to get onto Route 1 on the coast, and another 15 on Route 1 itself. So it took us 2 hour and 40 minutes to travel what should take a full hour less! Very hard to imagine tolerating these traffic conditions on a daily basis.
We struck it gold with our hotel, though! The Old Monterey Inn is a B&B in a gorgeous Tudor-style mansion built in 1929; the owners have preserved all the period details and furnished the place with antiques. It is set in a large, verdant garden.
And our room was lovely: spacious and enormously comfortable (if only we were millennials and could take advantage of the in-room Jacuzzi!).
