While I know a lot of places around Southern California, everything between San Francisco and Santa Barbara (what I call “Mid Cal”) has remained a mystery to me. A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to second shoot a wedding in Carmel. We flew from Santa Ana to San Jose on a Friday night and returned Sunday morning. As far as I knew, Carmel was just the hotel and the golf course where the wedding ceremony and reception took place. I never really thought about going back.
Over the years, I heard more about Big Sur, Carmel, and Monterey. I watched Big Little Lies on HBO and saw the Bixby Creek Bridge in the opening credits, and counted the number of times Reese Witherspoon stared out at the coast. My friend Kat wanted to go before moving back home to New York. Kat’s roommate Jess had grown up in Monterey, and our friend Esther had a friend in Carmel that she visits every few months, so we had some tour guides.
DAY 1
Kat’s birthday was over President’s Day Weekend, so we decided to spend two nights in Monterey. We hit the road at 8am, since it was going to be about a 6-hour drive from Los Angeles. We ended up stopping in San Luis Obispo and going to SLODOCO as a pit stop/donut snack. I got a creme brulee donut that was actually life-changing,10/10 would recommend if you like creme brulee.
Our first planned stop, Hearst Castle. You park in a massive parking lot and then go into the visitor’s center and check-in at one of the windows to get wristbands. We got there at like 12:27pm for our 12:30pm tour and just barely made it onto the little shuttle bus that took us up this 4-mile winding ride up to the castle on top of the hill. Not quite Ed Sheeran level, but as close as it gets in America. But it was kind of other-worldly, like Balboa Park in San Diego.
The tour guide was a nice elderly man and he took us around the outdoor pool and inside a few rooms of the castle. My favorite part was the blue indoor pool that you walk past right before you get back onto your tour bus. It looked like something that would be in Europe, maybe in Italy or Greece. It’s all gated off so you can’t go to the other side so everyone can get photos of the pool without other people in the background.
After, we kept driving to Monterey up along the coast. There were little restaurants periodically on either side of the road. There were pine trees everywhere and it reminded me of home. We tried to stop at a restaurant Kat had looked up, Cafe Kevah, for a snack, but the cafe was closed, so we just took in the views for a little and stretched our legs. The restaurant upstairs, Nepenthe required a reservation and we didn’t want to wait 30mins, so we drove a mile down the road to Big Sur Deli and got a quick bite to eat there.
The drive along the coast was beautiful, but windy – carsick people take caution. Finally, we made it to Bixby Creek Bridge right around golden hour and it was stunning. Although I had heard nightmares of the two-lane road having an endless backup caused by cars pulling over to take photos at the bridge, we didn’t have a problem. We easily found a spot to pull over and a cop was there making sure no one blocked the road. The scenery was just breathtaking, the massive cliff, and the tranquil ocean below. It made me want to go explore the Washington coast. We didn’t spend too much time there, as we wanted to get to Monterey before we were driving in the dark, as Jess cautioned the highway wasn’t well-lit at night.
We finally made it to our hotel at the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa. A room with two beds for two nights ended up being about $140 per person. We all spent some time relaxing and editing photos before driving to get burgers for dinner at Sur Restaurant. The restaurant has the vibe of a family-friendly sports bar and the menu looked pretty good. We got some garlic bread to start, and it was reminded Kat and I of the cheesy bread in the Chapman caf. By the time we got our food, it was around 9pm and we were starving, so we quickly polished everything off. They gave her a birthday dessert, and then we got back to the hotel and fell asleep.
DAY 2
The next morning, we all woke up pretty early and left the hotel before 9am to get bagels for breakfast at The Bagel Bakery. We sat at a table next to Paluca Trattoria, the café where the moms from Big Little Lies usually gather to gossip, and ate our food by the water.
Then, we drove to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It was cool, as all aquariums are, but I went to the Long Beach Aquarium a year ago, and they were pretty similar. I don’t think I’d recommend it unless you had children who really wanted to go because it’s kind of expensive aka $40-$50.
We spent about an hour there walking around, before heading to Paris Bakery Café for pastries and meeting up with Jess’s grandma at her little boutique. The day was still very young, and we decided to go to downtown Carmel. We ate our pastries in the car, I spilled the pastry cream on my white sweater, and then we headed out to walk. There were many streets lined with small cute shops and restaurants. It was sunny out and there were plenty of people walking out and about. I wasn’t very hungry after my pastry, but we went to a little restaurant called Pangaea Grill for lunch. It offered all sorts of dishes of different cuisines, and I ordered kimchi fried rice for the first time. And of course it comes out in this massive cauldron dish that I definitely could not finish. I wish I could’ve taken home the leftovers, the food was so good!
To walk our meals off, we trekked down the big hill to Carmel Beach even though we were very much not in beach clothing or walking shoes. It reminded me of the Oregon Coast, there was something very anti-LA about it. Maybe that it was crowded even though it was cold. There were a lot of dogs and just a very nice place to be. Sweating, we made it back up the hill and drove back to the hotel for a bit to rest before heading to Carmel.
The 17 Mile Drive is a pretty big tourist attraction in Carmel, even though it’s just driving through a bougie neighborhood on the coast. It’s kind of like a gated neighborhood/state park. You pull up to a booth and pay the $10.50 per vehicle to enter. The houses are huge and you’ll pass by golf courses. There are several little parking lots along the way for people (me) who want to stop and take photos. Unfortunately, you’re not driving along the water the whole time, but the trees are very pretty as well. As we approached mile 9, we found we were in some unexpected traffic. After about 10 minutes of bumper to bumper, we finally saw the hold up was for the Lone Cypress lookout point, one of the most photographed trees in the country. There wasn’t any available parking, so we didn’t stop, but one day I want to. There were a few other nice places, but I think the first half of the drive had the best views.
For dinner, we went back to the Monterey Fisherman’s Wharf where there’s a ton of chowder houses. We got some samples of soup and shopped around before our reservation for Kat’s birthday dinner at Paluca Trattoria. It was kind of expensive, but there was free bread, we got some delicious pasta and they gave Kat complimentary cannolis as her birthday dessert.
We stopped at Trader Joe’s for snacks for the car ride back to LA, then returned to the hotel with full bellies and went to sleep.
DAY 3
We woke up early again to get breakfast with Jess’s grandma back in downtown Carmel at The Little Swiss Café. It was a very small restaurant that maybe seats 25 people. It kind of felt like you were in a little wooden cabin in the Alps, with paintings on the wooden walls. Note: it’s cash-only.
And then off we were back to Los Angeles. Of course, we had to stop at SLODOCO for one last donut for the ride home. There was a lot more traffic getting back from the long weekend and it probably took us 7-8 hours even though we took the shorter route inland.
The whole trip including the hotel, tickets for Hearst Castle and the aquarium, and food amounted to about $300 and it was definitely $300 well spent. I want to go back to do hiking in Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park and hope to get out there soon. Overall, I really enjoyed the trip, it’s nice to get back to a slower pace of life! I also liked traveling with this group of girls, we all liked to get up early, take photos, and were down to spend money on food. It was a nice way to celebrate Kat’s last birthday in CA for a while.
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