Monterey & Carmel - A Californian Summer - Part Four

Monterey & Carmel

We took the 4 hour drive from Yosemite and drove straight to Carmel. Generally people group these two towns together as they are next door and often visited together. Carmel is essentially a pretty lined grid of streets filled with independent cafes bakeries and boutiques. The bottom of the grid lies a large stretch of Sandy white beach and is also famous for the 1 7 Mile Drive. We spent a couple of hours mooching around the sunny centre of town, stopped for a quick lunch and to test the white sand, then sneak a view from the lookout binoculars before heading onto our hotel for the next two nights in Monterey.

I have a fundamental issue with Monterey. The weather. It seems to be in its own micro climate which also happens to resemble the cold, gloomy skies of a classic grey British day. It’s not my friend. Even in sunny California, there are areas where you can come and feel right at home. Ten minutes away in Carmel it may have been a beautiful sunny delight but Monterey was like flying back home to England for its blustery greys and drizzly skies. For this reason alone 2 nights is the perfect amount of time to do the best things this town has to offer because Monterey excels in Aquariums and Humpback whales!

There’s an attractive main street area in Monterey decorated with all the shops and eateries, plus a pier filled with seafood restaurants and sweet shops selling every type of sugar delight and their famous salt water taffy. If you have kids that still love a playground definitely head to the amazing Dennis the Menace themed playground. We didn’t make it with our age groups and timings but its also next to a man made lake where you can rent paddleboats.

Whale watching. We were lucky enough to see over 30 humpback whales on our early morning trip with @monterey_bay_whale_watch plus numerous funny little sea lions that entertain you and help the whales feed. The tour we took started at 8am for a half day explore, so we checked in at 7.30am on the Pier office where you can also watch the funny sealions hanging around and were advised to take some seasickness medication before we boarded. They had both natural ginger tablets and the hard stuff to choose from so whatever floats your seasickness boat. As I said, Monterey is much like England - cold and grey. If you go out on a boat I highly recommend you take a down feather jacket or a thermal layer/numerous layers and gloves. I really can’t explain that even in summer it’s freezing. 4 hours at sea is a long time to be cold. If you are on a long trip like us bringing a thermal layer might seem silly but if you intened to whale watch its an essential. Totally worth it to see these beautiful creatures in nature. Be prepared to make lots of ‘oohs and ahhs.’ They are magical. Obviously whales aren’t guaranteed and there’s certain times of year they are more common but during August the company we went with had daily sightings.

Monterey Bay Aquarium. If Carlsberg made Aquariums, this would be it! I’ve been to a fair few of these in my life being an ocean loving family but I can guarantee this is a unique place. The beautiful building houses everything from the showstopping glass underwaterworlds to kelp forests, otter habitats, dressing up toddler areas, touch tidepools and waterfall experiences where you can sit underneath glass boxes and feel the force of a waterwall falling on top and all around you. It’s legit cool. If you are organised in advance you can also try scuba diving in their education pool. The whole experience goes on and on and just when you think you are finished you find another floor or exhibit. It’s immersive and interactive. The cafe is spot on and i can confirm the gift shops were highly popular too but the top highlight for me were the jellyfish. They were something else. Monterey Bay Aquarium Day tickets are currently between $34.95 and $49.95 and theres a free bus that takes you there from the town centre.

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Where we Stayed

Hotel Pacific There’s not too much choice on offer in this area for big families but we managed to stay in a good sized room with simple decor and a fireplace. Two double beds, a sofa bed and a small dining table kitchenette so perfect for anyone wanting to brave the weather and stay longer. Breakfast wasn’t a strong point but if you just need a coffee and some toast you’re good to go. The location was perfect for walking around the main areas. There’s also underground parking (no valet) at the hotel for a fee.

Cost We paid approximately £392 for two nights (without parking and tax) with 5 people in a room. For under £200 a night it was a great choice.

Highlights

Carmel - Make sure you visit Carmel for the pretty town, cafes and shops. Plus a beautiful sandy beach.

Monterey Bay Aquarium - no brainer for all agaes. For more information visit here.

Whale Watching - We used Monterey Bay Whale Watch which I’d highly recommend. I’d book on the first day of your stay in case it gets cancelled due to choppy seas and you need to rearrange it to the next day. Remember WARM clothes and to take sea sickness prevention and a camera!

Dennis The Menace Playground - 777 Pearl St, Monterey.

17 Mile Drive. A scenic drive through wild rugged beauty. Cliffs, beaches and forest passing the famous Pebble Beach golf course. You pay a small toll of $10.50 with includes a map of the key vistas along the way and the iconic Lone Cypress. So many cool animals to spot along the route and loads of areas to pull over and get out of your car. The best part of this however is seeing all the AMAZING houses en route. If you’ve ever seen BIG LITTLE LIES with Reece Witherspoon, it’s where the majority of this was filmed! There are several entrances which can take around 18 minutes to drive, but allow an hour including all the times you might want to pull over and take a better look.

There’s so much to pack into this guide you’ll have to come back for part 4 and a half ! Our journey down the Pacific Coast Highway to CAMBRIA and Part five, our visit to OJAI to stay in the airstreams of Caravan Outpost. See you Monday!

A Californian Summer

Road trips are my thing. I like listening to music, fresh air and long periods of inactivity in my legs. I’m pretty good at holding the urge to pee but mostly I just like the feeling of going back in time, doing things the old school way and living life on the fly. I get planes, I do. I need them to get from A to B, but if there’s ever a reason I don’t really need one, i’ll take the other option. Environmentally they are poison, I once had a panic attack on one, thanks to my mate claustrophobia and whilst grabbing a long haul business class bargain may be a experience worth the pain, a short economy class convenience trip is just a means to an end, and if i have the time and the option, I’m happy to trade.

You know that feeling you get when you press your head to the side of a window whilst listening to your favourite tunes and imagine yourself in a scene from a film? Well if you do, that’s me on a road trip. Shut your eyes with the wind in your face and I feel as close to satisfying my inner adventurer as i get. You don’t need to go to California to get this, so if it’s not in your budget, try anywhere you can drive to with some open roads that aren’t purely motorways. Scotland, The New Forest, Wales, Cornawall. There’s always somewhere to explore.

Road tripping with kids isn’t as painful as you think. For a start, it’s really important that they learn the ‘art of boredom’. Of doing nothing, entertaining themselves whatever you want to call it, but in our busy worlds I think sometimes they need to learn that waiting in queues and not being entertained constantly, are real life things people just need to deal with. You are literally giving them a life skill. Small children might cause you the need to stop a bit more frequently for toilet stops but there’s audio books, music, family car games and movies if you have a screen to download any onto! As i said its hardly an endurance test for them.

California was made for the road trip. It’s sunny disposition, raw natural beauty and diverse landscape with long stretches of open road, make for easy driving with an almost filmlike type of experience.

I’ve broken this trip down to 12 parts working through each stop on our route. There are so many different ways to make this trip work but i always start with the same planning formula on any trip in this order:

• How many days I have in total

• Where do I want to go/ how long do I need in each place? / what do I want to do in each destination?

• Distance or time it takes to travel between the destinations and allowance for dead time like parking the car and checking in/familiarisation of a new room/hotel.

• Cost on accomodation and travel for the whole trip split into an average cost per day/night. Remebering that in the US, they add taxes on when you check out!

This generally dictates how far you can go, for how long and how much you can spend. I then jiggle around days and things i want to do to make it more cost effective and allow for down time and i try and make sure some of the accomodation is moveable just in case we want to spend longer in any one place. I spend a great deal of time researching and finding accomodation that serves my design fetish. I refuse to waste money on average, ‘meh’ type hotels and houses and prefer to split my cash by staying in some really dream like often pricey places, balanced off with some much cheaper basic accomodation, still hopefully with some features i find aesthetically pleasing.

Starting off for us in San Francisco was dictated mainly by cost. Book flights early as possible and worry about your accomodation afterwards. Just make sure you have travel insurance from the start of your booking in case of any eventualities or worldwide pandemics! Flying in and out of LAX actually cost us more and we managed to blag business class seats for a relatively small increase becauase of the time, day and airports we were happy to travel from, also using some Virgin miles. To give you an idea about the price difference. The same seats and trip would have cost over £40,000 more for our family on a different day, time and airport destination. It’s wild.

1. SAN FRANCISCO

2. LAKE TAHOE via SONOMA

3. YOSEMITE including BASS LAKE.

4. MONTEREY AND CARMEL - CAMBRIA

5. OJAI

6. SANTA BARBARA

7. LOS ANGELES

8. PALM SPRINGS

9. JOSHUA TREE/ YUCCA VALLEY

10. SAN DIEGO

11. DISNEYLAND CALIFORNIA AND UNIVERSAL STUDIOS

12. MALIBU

USA BASICS
Right now to enter the US you need an ESTA visa and have to apply online at least 72 hours before departure. It’s takes a while to submit these and they basically want to know everything bar the state of your left kidney and the colour of your bra. Don’t leave it til the last minute to fill this in. The queue for passport control here was very long also, which is not ideal after a long flight but it is what it is. It could have just been a bad day but in my experience, it’s not the friendliest of countries to arrive in. You might feel you are being treated as if you are a criminal, but I like to consider it as part of the travelling experience. Character building.

FAMILY ROOM HOTEL ALLOCATIONS
We like to stay in the same room as the kids on holidays because

a) it’s cheaper than paying for two rooms and

b) I sleep better knowing exactly where they are.

On this trip my kids were 10,12 and 8 so still small enough to top and tail in a bed together. Some hotels if booking through a computer don’t accept a family of 5 in one room and often automatically want to book you two rooms. Top tip: If you contact the hotel direct, they are often happy for you to cheat the system and allow you to alter the number of kids in your group to fit in a room, as long as they don’t have to provide an extra bed. It saves big families BIG money. If you are road tripping around it might even be worth buying a small roll up bed to put in the car in case they get fed up all the places they’ll be sharing!

First stop San Francisco!