Our trip to Monterey

A few weeks ago, we took off for a few days using GP's (see above) 40th High School reunion as an excuse for a get-a-way. We blew Escondido on a Thursday afternoon, drove to LA to check on a job there (does that make the trip a tax write-off?), and ate lunch at a famous place we saw on "Sandwich Paradise" (GM loves the Food Paradise Series on the Travel channel !)
This is copied from the food paradise web site:

Phillipe The Original Los Angeles, CA The East Coast claims most of the oldest and best delis in the country, but the West Coast boasts one of America's oldest sandwiches, the French dip. Established in 1908, Philippe The Original is one of the oldest and best-known restaurants in SoCal. What you may not know is that this delicious treat was a happy accident. One day, the restaurant's owner, Phillipe Mathieu was making a sandwich and inadvertently dropped the sliced French roll into a roasting pan filled with juice, still hot from the oven. The patron accepted the sandwich anyway, and a star was born!

It was very yummy and proved to be only the first of many, many food stops!

After lunch we drove to Santa Barbara where we walked , walked, walked (GM loves to walk).

We enjoyed a snack of shrimp in a cool little restaurant out on a pier.

We drove thru town on the way to our hotel and decided that we really liked Santa Barbara!

The beach and downtown areas have much t see and do. We noticed that the train station was close enough to walk to some of the motels and I'm sure it will be a future return trip.

We ate dinner at Chucks Steak House, which used to have a place in Escondido, and eating there brought back lot's of memories.

Our hotel there was neat, but they had a free little breakfast thing where GM selected a good looking little muffin thing that turned out to be the worst thing ever! It was like someone rolled some dirt into a ball and baked it! Oh well.

With that taste in our mouths, we jumped into the car and started up the coast along highway 1.

This is without a doubt one of the worlds most scenic drives. We stopped several times to walk, look at sea lions and stuff, and of course----eat.

The picture at the top of our blog page was a self-timer picture (we got good at that) taken at a little restaurant we stopped at along highway 1.

We arrived at Monterey in the afternoon where we checked into the coolest hotel we ever stayed at! I splurged a little when I was making reservations on-line and GM allowed me, grudgingly, to spend a little more on a room than we usually do (you know,...we'll leave the light on for you....)

There was a little surprise there when we found out that the hotel had no place to park and you had to valet park all the time you're there, but how can you go wrong when there's a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory store directly across the street from your hotel entrance!

Our hotel was right on cannery row, an historic part of Monterey you may have read about in John Steinbeck's book of the same title.

There is much to do and see there. There's a cool walk and bike path between cannery row and fisherman's wharf, about a mile. Needless to say, we made that trek several times. The wharf had a bunch of restaurants, most of which offered free samples of clam chowder out in front of their stores to entice you to come in. There was all kinds of food was there, including lots of great sourdough bread. Since we were only there for a few meals, we had to carefully choose where we ate. We did good., however.

We started to eat at Bubba Gumps, but it was too busy.

Here's a picture of the bench out front.

We ended up eating here and it was great!

There was a neat little Cinnamon bun place out in front, and we also got free breakfast in bed each morning.


I guess I need to get away from the food aspect, which we obviously enjoy, and talk about some other things we did.
Mom always wanted (which I never knew) a caricture painting and we had one made of us on fisherman's wharf.

We also took a short glass bottom boat ride in the harbor, saw lots of seals, birds, etc.

Sat afternoon, we left for the 45 minute drive to the reunion site. Getting our car out of the parking garage turned out to be one of only a few bleak spots on the trip (The other being leaving some cherries we bought at a roadside stand behind in the frig in our room).

I won't go into detail except to say that it made me think, perhaps because we were on our way to the reunion, of the thing that 'they' always told us in high school, which is, "you won't go anywhere in life without your HS diploma". Well I figured out where some of those people without diplomas ended up. They're members of the PPLAA (professional parking lot attendants of America). I don't really think even a HS diploma could have helped those idiots.

Anyway, GM restrained me from doing anything foolish and we sped on, now late, to the reunion.

The reunion was everything I knew it would be and less.

It was put on at a place a couple of hours from where I went to school, so the attendance was poor. It was put on by a classmate that I didn't know in school who is the marketing director at the country club where the event was held, so you figure it out. Anyway, the 2 people that I really went to see where there and I had a great time hooking up with them.


One of them was the quarterback of our football team. I went to school with a lot of Japanese kids and our coach used to say if he could find a Japanese fullback, he could have a Kamikaze backfield, as I was the only 'white guy'. Sorry coach.

Boy, the people there looked old! I hardly fit in!

Did I mention that the room wasn't large enough for everyone, so GM and I sat at a table out in the driveway? Dale and Vicki came out and sat with us so it ended up being fine.

The rest of our trip was uneventful as we sadly left Sunday morning for the long, boring drive home. We did pass a huge field of broccoli growing which I wish I would have been able to take a picture of for CJ, as that's his favorite food.

Well that's about it till next time!