Up very early! 5:30 AM alarm, quick cuppa, throw last electronics in bag, and out the door at 6 AM. Easy ride to Newark, park at Haynes, and move fairly quickly through very long TSA Pre line.
Pretty comfortable flight: new plane, seats wide enough, enough leg room. Of course it’s United so nothing really works: wifi system to deliver entertainment has fewer than half of the plane’s capacity. Sue couldn’t get on at all, I got bumped half way through. And no food even on transcontinental flights.
Quick walk through SFO and onto air train, pick up our gray Hyundai Elantra at Thrifty and off we go. Californians drive fast but predictably: in Monterey in a jiffy.
The Monterey Plaza Hotel is really terrific. Built on pylons over Monterey Bay, it has great ocean views everywhere. Big dark wood lobby / bar with panoramic views and comfy seating hosted us for a glass of wine both nights. Room was spacious and comfortable, with views right out onto the bay.
We were tired, but we only put our feet up for a few minutes before heading out. We drove through Pacific Grove to the coast road.
The section through Pacific Grove is spectacular, with windswept, barren shores and surf pounding on huge rock formations. We stopped to gawk and snap every few hundred yards.
Seventeen Mile Drive is private and costs ten bucks. It is also marred to a certain extent by development: it really is a chain of golf courses (Spanish Bay, Spyglass Hill, Pebble Beach) with huge, vulgar mansions.
But if you only look out to sea, it is one of the most beautiful places in the world. A twisted, tortured coast with dense cypress groves. Many viewpoints, many pictures, a kind of natural ecstasy.
We drove into Carmel and drove around looking for a parking spot, thinking we would have a glass of wine, but 15 minutes brought no result. The place is charming, but very clearly a very rich resort–and jammed with (other) tourists. So we headed back to Monterey, which suited us much better.
We each had a glass of Central Coast Pinot Noir: a Talbot and something else. Very nice, and the glasses were enormous, probably a third of a bottle fo 18 bucks.
We wanted to eat early and walked about ten minutes into town to La Bahia. I went back to my roots with some really good Mexican American chow: combo platter with pork tostada, chicken enchilada and a terrific tamale, all washed down with a Negro Modelo. Sue had a whole plate of the yummy tamales. Only the frijoles were a disappointment.
Breakfast at the hotel and then the slog up the freeway to the Getty. Tom and Em were as taken with the place as we were. We saw the entire main collection and had lunch in the cafe.
Although it was a bit tight, we drove all the way across town to Pasadena and the Huntington Gardens. We had plenty of time and did the whole circuit.
That night we had a remarkable meal at a new Asian place called Lukshon. Small plates, vivid, original flavors, and a great wine list.
Day Two: Big Sur, a small mechanical issue, and new friends
Sue slept in, having been awakened during the night; I had breakfast at the coffee shop next door, Tidal, and read and watched football (love that YouTube TV!). We rolled out around 9:30, heading down Route 1.
The great views start just past Carmel. We decided not to pull into Point Lobos State Park, although that must be a spectacular place. We once again stopped at just about every pullout.
The landscape here is very different: very green hills (the Carmel Valley itself is spectacularly verdant) that roll down right to the water. As the coast got rockier and dominated by headlands, the road twists in and out and up and down.
We stopped for lots of pictures at Bixby Bridge…
and were soon in Big Sue proper among the redwoods.
We stopped to get oriented at Big Sue Station (a joint project of the forest service, state parks, and a local conservancy) and stocked up on reading about the region. The very nice man behind the desk obviously loved the region, and was full of good advice. He confirmed what we’d heard before: the road was closed by a huge landslip at the southern edge of Big Sur. We decided to drive down another twenty miles or so, doing some beach walks, then return to a park for a walk among the redwoods.
Pfeiffer Beach is located down a steep, rutted, one-lane road. At the bottom we encountered two young women standing in the road talking to a ranger across what seemed to be a rushing stream. They wanted a lift across because their car was parked up the road, but soon learned that they would be towed and headed back. The ranger said the road was very passable, so we plunged through the water, which was probably ten inches deep. There were lots of cars on the other side, so we figured we were ok. Here is the stream as it neared the water.
The beach itself is marked by two huge rock castles offshore.
–and by some remarkable purple sand!
We did a long walk as the tide came in, ending at a small feeder canyon.
Back at the car, it started up fine and we were soon in front of the stream. I was afraid of stalling, so i went in pretty hard, and when we came out, we heard a terrible noise. Sue at first didn’t see anything under the car, but a ways up the road we stopped again and she found that the plastic protective panel under the front end had come loose and was dragging. We couldn’t stop on the one-lane road, so we drove screeching and wailing back to Big Sur Station.
Breaking down in Big Sur isn’t advisable: there is absolutely no cell service. The man at the ranger station was the soul of solicitude, though. We used his phone to call Thrifty. They weren’t very helpful, telling me we had to wait for a tow back to San Jose, two hours away! Several more calls brought little more information: the claimed that the tow truck was not authorized to drop us at Monterey, where there were rental cars. Many fellow travelers were very sympathetic and offered lots of help.
Sue got talking to one group of people about our age, and they offered to share some bread and cheese–Sue hadn’t eaten breakfast and was famished. These three people were absolutely memorable. Ricardo Sternberg and his wife Chris from Toronto, and Greg Keller from Bozeman. Ricardo was an emeritus professor of Brazilian lit at Toronto, Greg an emeritus professor of English professor at Montana State. Chris was a midwife. We were soon deep in conversation as we discovered mutual friends and interests. Ricardo and Chris come to Monterey for two months every winter, renting an apartment, and Greg was visiting for a few days.
It turned out that we still had a long wait for the truck, and they promised to check back in with us after they had driven further down the coast. After a couple more frustrating calls, we decided to give the car back to the tow truck driver and make our way, either on the twice a day bus, or with our new friends, back to Monterey.
We were both in surprisingly good moods: despite the mishap, we had had a lovely day in a lovely place and had met some lovely people–not just our new friends, but the gentleman behind the desk, who continued to be unbelievably helpful.
Our friends came back just before the tow truck, and they graciously agreed to drive us to Monterey Airport. The driver said there was no real damage, just the replacement of the underbody panel. And we trusted him to return the car to Thrifty. So off we went, packed into their Subaru Forester. On the way back, Sue gave them all the Burma pitch…we’ll see!
Finding a car was a bit trickier than anticipated: most of the six agencies had no cars, but we finally found a white Chevy Malibu at National. The car rental will probably cost double what I had anticipated–before we go to war with Thrifty over the damages!
We had a therapeutic glass of wine–a third of a bottle of 2014 Chateau Montalena Cab for 20 bucks!–and booked a table at a fish restaurant, PassionFish, that our friends had recommended highly.
We had a wonderful meal at a terrific restaurant. The wine list is one of the best I’ve seen, with great selections from every region, and at remarkable prices: 50-80% above retail. I put myself in the hands of our server, and ended up with a Ceritas Trout Gulch Chardonnay, which was remarkable enough to get me on their list and buy a sampler case!
We got going fairly early (after coffee from the little cafe attached to the hotel) and headed back down to Big Sur. Stopped at a couple of state parks hoping for short walks, but most of the trails were closed due to high water. We finally drove all the way south to Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, where we walked in to see McWay Falls, the famous waterfall that spouts directly into the ocean. That’s it on the left…it may be slightly overrated…
We were hoping to get further south, but the going is so slow south of Big Sur village that we decided to turn north and try and get in a short walk in the redwoods, which we did–although hardly out in nature, since the walk wound around the Big Sur lodge!
The trip to San Simeon took a while: we had to go back north to Monterey, then inland, then south through an agricultural valley before turning back west near Paso Robles in order to get to the coast again. The drive down through the barren hill country is spectacular, and the coast, while less interesting than further north, is still beautiful.
Hearst Castle is much more beautiful and much less kitschy than I remembered. At least the exterior, which forms a Spanish Colonial village.
And the site, high above the sea, is splendid. Xanadu indeed!
OK, the inside is completely wacko…the product of some perverse idea of European splendor. American money at its worst.
We did have a great guide and really got a sense for what life was like when The Chief was alive.
Sue was of course especially taken with the pool, which is a gorgeous Roman bath.
We checked into our motel, which was wildly overpriced but perfectly nice, and decided on a local farm to table in Cambria called Robin’s. It was pretty good, with a couple of good courses and some missteps, but then we had Passionfish in our memory!
Day Four: Montana de Oro Beach Walk and Paso Robles Wine Country
We wanted to see the big slide at the south end of Big Sur, so we drove up. It really is a spectacular site: a new peninsula out into the ocean. We could only get within a few hundred yards, but well worth the drive.
Then we hightailed it south along the coast to meet our good friends Cindy and Gary H. at Montana de Oro State Park for a lovely beach walk. They’ve now lived in California long enough to count as natives! Just like old times, catching up and taking in some nature.
We would have walked forever, but we had a reservation at Linné Casado Winery. We found a deli in Morro Bay and had a good sandwich before heading down the road to the winery. It was a pretty glitzy but beautiful operation. The young woman who did the tasting was a trained oenologist, and very informative. The wines, though, were a massive disappointment: old style Cali, with huge fruit and alcohol. We bought some wine, mostly a white, which didn’t taste as good in NJ, and one bottle of high-octane red.
The next winery was owned by the cousin of a friend of Gary’s. John and his wife couldn’t have been more welcoming. John spent a full two hours with us, showing us the vineyards and his growing techniques, then the cellar, where he had us do some comparative sampling: the same wine picked two weeks apart and then aged in similar barrels, and the same wine picked the same day but aged in different barrels. Very informative! And the wines were much better than the famous joint up the road: more restrained and nuanced.
Lesson learned: I had gone for the highly recommended place over good sense, and hadn’t checked out the reviewer for Vinous!
Dinner that night at a restaurant recommended by Jamie Rankin was also very good: Artisan had some good wine by the carafe, and we had a very nice Tablas Creek Châteauneuf look alike along with some new California grub.
We spent the morning and early afternoon at the Getty. The weather was very uncalifornian: it rained most of the day!
I hadn’t anticipated how spectacular the museum would be: a series of pavilions with panoramic views out to sea and across the entire LA basin.
We saw a fabulous early American photo show and some interesting smaller shows (Rembrandt and India, for instance), but didn’t have time to touch the main collection.
Back at the ranch, we helped Cindy get ready for dinner with the Schai’s, our Burma buddies. We had a really nice dinner, and a celebration of Gary’s birthday.
We didn’t get too early a start and then headed down to Santa Barbara. We passed some burnt out areas and some mud slides before stopping at an overlook at a high point of the coast mountains with views deep into some mountain ranges where the Hughes have walked in the past.
Santa Barbara really is a lovely town, though we didn’t see nearly enough of it. We did tour the mission, one of the oldest on the coast.
After grabbing a sandwich downtown we headed south, first through Montecito, where the slides had killed people. There was a lot of rain in the forecast (the Californians called it an “atmospheric river”!) and most of Montecito had been evacuated.
As you drive closer to LA, the subdivisions start to sprout, and we were soon in a big development where the Hughes residence sits; it’s quite a place, with the streets running up canyons between steep ridges.The house is lovely, with a lap pool and a fire pit area out back!
We went out for Mexican, but it turned out to be a chain in a mall…pretty disappointing!
After a slow start, we drove down to Hollywood, where we had booked at the Kimpton Everly.
Tom and Em had come up from Palm Desert a day early and scouted the place, which was brand new, hip minimalist, and very nice.
We decided to try the new contemporary museum in downtown LA, but once we got there, it looked like an hour wait in the rain.
So it was back in the car to battle the freeways, LACMA ho! LA is probably OK if you live and work in the same enclave, but if you ever have to leave, it is absolute hell.
LACMA was great: we saw most of the twentieth century and contemporary collections. I hadn’t remembered how great the German collections were.
We had a glass of wine in the hotel bar before heading to dinner at Lucques, a Chez-Panisse alum’s really fine restaurant. We scored big again on wine, drinking an Arnot-Robert Syrah, which was a really, really beautiful bottle.
