Continued from Cali Coast Day 5 Part 1.

Well, that’s that for the aquarium. I think my favorite part was the tide pool exhibits. It’s just so unique to this aquarium. Biggest disappointment has to be the lack of sunfish. Sigh. Maybe next time I’ll see the elusive mola mola.

We debated about getting some lunch on the road, and just eating in the car. Well, that would have worked well for one of us, and only one of us. We walked by the aquarium cafe on the way out, and decided to just grab a quick bite to eat here instead.

That’s a cobbler, with chicken and vegetables.

Look at the size of this berry(olallieberry?)!!! Sooo soooo good!! All the food in this cafe ended up being top notch, and for a fair price. We made an excellent choice in eating here, instead of some place along the road.

On top of everything, we sat next to the window and had this calming ocean view while we ate.

Sea otters in the wild.

After our satisfying lunch, it was a quick walk back to our hotel, then back in the car.

Leaving Monterey.

We are heading to 17 Mile Drive, where Pebble Beach is located at. It’s a very famous scenic road along the coast. There is actually a toll to get into the Pebble Beach community. If I remember correctly, it was $9.75 or so. Why not just charge $10?

Driving along the coastline, pimp houses along the way.

Beautiful coastline. I’d live here.

The local map that I got from the hotel didn’t tell me exactly how to get into the gates of Pebble Beach. There are access gates where the toll booths are. The staff from the hotel said that if I just drive along the coast, I would see signs and I couldn’t miss it. Well, they lied. I saw the sign, then I missed the turn. We drove into Pacific Grove, the adjacent community, looking for more signage, but no luck. We stopped by to ask some lady getting into her car if she could help us with directions. She knew how to get there, but couldn’t remember the exact roads. She offered to drive and have us follow her, but we thanked her and decided to just keep on driving around until we found the entrance.

My plan is to just drive onto 17 mile drive, and I figured we’ll run into a gate sooner or later.

Sure enough, here’s the gate into the community. Paid our toll, got a map, let’s go!

Big money in here. This is actually one of the crappier houses.

Holy crap white sand. I wonder why this stretch of coast has such white sand.

One of the many golf courses in the community. The weather was amazing, in the 70s. It was sunny, albeit a little bit windy, but I bet it’s often windy here being right by the coast. No one was playing golf!! I say maybe 2 golfers in the many courses that I drove by. That was very odd, and such a shame.

Poop rocks. Never knew rocks covered with poop could look so beautiful.

Where are all the golfers?

At one of the many turnouts/lookouts along the road.

How incredible would it be go on a run along this trail?

Seals.

Lots and lots of seals. Do they ever stop barking, ever?

This guy’s outfit was….questionable.

Hah, a little fairytale house.

Next to the fairytale house is this modern house. I like this one.

17 mile drive is a must visit!

Love the red vegetation.

Getting close to Cypress Point golf course. There are more trees over here.

Cypress Point overlook. Photos can’t do this place justice, just stunningly beautiful.

Huge house, but no ocean view. Meh!

This is probably the most famous view of 17 mile drive. This is the Lone Cypress. It is actually barely standing, there are steel cables holding it up to keep it from falling over,. I am sure they’ve spent tons of money to make sure that it survives since it’s such a tourist draw. You can’t actually walk over to the Lone Cypress, it’s all fenced off.

That was that for 17 mile drive. Definitely one of the most scenic routes I’ve ever driven. I bet it’s annoying to live there, and have to put up with all the slow driving tourists though.

17 mile drive brought us South, so now we are headed North, into and through Monterey.

Sand dunes.

Produce. Lots and lots of produce.

Holy shit, that’s cheap! 7 avocados for $1. We saw another sign earlier that said 10 for $1. I sometimes pay $1.50 for one in Austin. I don’t even know what I’d do with 10 avocados…

Stopped to get some gas. There are so many farms in this area, and also a lot more Hispanics. The attendants in this gas station only spoke Spanish to each other.

MSD, why would you etch your name onto an area for people to sit on, piss on, and shit on? You suck at vandalism.

Hispanics, I’d imagine immigrant workers(perhaps illegal?) working the fields.

We saw these trucks pulling supplies and portapotties following along with all the farm workers. I bet their working condition sucks shit. I thought that it was interesting that they usually have multiple portapotties instead of just one. There usually aren’t that many of them out there to justify having mutiple ones. Wonder why that is?

Into the mountains, the flora changes pretty immediately into tall tress with deep shades of green leaves.

Reached one of the outer communities of the Bay Area. For all the creative and tech industries out here, it looks just like suburbs of Anywhere USA.

It’s about 4pm, we need to drop off the rental car by 5pm. Of course, we run into traffic. Thanks to me, and thanks to RH, we were able to drive in the carpool lane that helps some with our speed.

Made it to the airport with time to spare before 5pm. I hate the stress of having to get somewhere by a certain time, and not having a clue what traffic would be like.

Filling up some gas. I see this graphic at some gas stations, and it’s wrong. The gas cap for all Porsche 911s are in the front fender. What a blatant mistake!!

Hertz(the company I went with this time), really does dominate the rental car business.

Dropping off the Mazda 3. Super happy with this car!!! It handles so well, better than my Audi A3. For the price, I don’t think I could have gotten a better car for this trip.

Speaking of rental cars, I could have made a reservation online about 3 weeks before the trip for around $30 a day(before taxes and fees). Unfortunately, I didn’t make the reservation until about two weeks before the trip, and all the prices jumped up to the mid $50s. My consolation prize was that I was able to rent for Hertz for the same price as I could from one of the smaller rental places.

Airport tram to get to the BART station in the airport. From there, we will head into San Francisco.

This is RH’s disapproving face as I took a spy shot of the guy standing behind her. We get on the tram, and this guy gets on his phone. He calls customer service and for about 5 minutes just laying on the biggest pile of insulting shit I’ve heard in the past few years. Oh, he was eloquent, never cussing and using terms like “abject disappointment”, “disappoint me to the lowest depth”. It was comical how furious this man was. What was he so fucking pissed off about, you ask? A few champagne glasses. He paid them to be shipped, but for some reason they couldn’t get shipped on time. Never seen anyone so pissed over a few champagne glasses….

Ahh, the unnecessarily difficult to use BART ticketing system. Spend billions building a rail system, but spend the price of an overcooked dry steak and hire the world’s most incompetent firm to design your ticketing machine interface. I’d traveled to other countries where I could not read a single word on the machine, but still managed to buy tickets. I could read everything on this machine, but still had difficulty. You piece of shit machine!! I wasn’t the only person hating on this machine, everyone hates it.

The depressing and dirty BART trains. Yeah, I am not a big fan of the BART. The cloth seats are always stained and dirty.

Almost to San Francisco, taken from BART’s dirty stained windows. I think the BART gives you cancer.

The BART makes the world an uglier place.

Reached Powell Station in San Francisco. Get me out of the BART train!!! Now, we walk a few short blocks to the hotel.

I love these anticipation photos of escalator rides onto the surface from down below. Except, I’ve been here before, so I know what to expect this time.

Cable car and shopping is what to expect here.

Me too, and so does half of the world!!

Union Square.

Reached the hotel, a block from Union Square.

It’s relatively much taller than the other buildings around it. This scares me….San Francisco is in an earthquake zone….sigh. I guess I’ll take my chances. It has been open for 99 years, and has withstood all those earthquakes, so I guess I’ll be ok. When it opened in 1914, it was the tallest building in San Francisco.

On the 12th floor, facing the back of the hotel. This is a good thing, as it’s quieter on this side. There is no AC, so the windows are left open for air, and we could still faintly hear the musicians playing in Union Square. Over the next few days, we would regularly hear the faint sounds of bagpipe and trumpet,originating from the street musicians in Union Square, bouncing off others buildings, into the open window.

Small and cramped restroom. The room and restroom are small, like European hotels.

The view from the hotel window. Union Square is on the other side of this window, but the music still manages to stream in on this side.

Back on the street, in search of dinner. We want dim sum!!!!

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

The blurry gates of Chinatown. I was actually a little distressed at my camera at this point since the photos from the aquarium didn’t come out as well as I had hoped. I actually started to wonder if my camera was starting to fail…Please don’t die RX100, I love you.

In Chinatown.

A bunch of junk that I would never buy.

Have they been selling this same shirt since 1953?

Another blurry shot. Sigh…

That Asian influenced building is actually a bank.

As we were walking to Chinatown, RH was worried that the dim sum place would be closed. I didn’t think it would be closed so early, it’s not even 7pm yet. Well…apparently, everyone who operates in Chinatown is scared of the dark. By the time we got here, all the shops were closed or ready to close. The dim sum places were no exception, so we left Chinatown empty stomached. Shit!! We want dim sum so badly, and we only want dim sum.

Since everything had closed in Chinatown, we had to walk back to the area around our hotel, and search for food.

I am incapable of taking a nonblurry photo today.

Yelp led us here. We still want dim sum, but this will have to do for tonight.

OK, this has potential. It’s a very small narrow restaurant. RH and I love these hole in the wall kind of places.

Chicken!!! FEED ME!!!

Get in my belly!!! So good, I was starving. It was excellent Thai, but unfortunately, it wasn’t what we were looking for. We were so set on dim sum tonight, the food filled our stomachs, but not our soul.

Saw this in an art gallery display window. It was covered in finger prints…really? Couldn’t they have wiped it down?

RH suggested that we go for nightcap before we head back to the hotel. How about this place? Apparently, there are a lot of Japanese tourists in San Francisco.

Hmmm…not feeling it. It was packed, but it just wasn’t quite what we were looking for. It felt a little depressing inside here actually.

We gave up on the idea of grabbing a drink, but then saw this hotel right across from ours. Looks promising.

This will do for tonight! We both ordered a drink, toasted, made fun of others patrons in the lobby(come on, everyone makes fun of that girl who tries too hard and wears 8 inch heels), relaxed, then left satisfied. So tired, it’s time to head back, blogging awaits.

The bellman for this hotel. He must feel ridiculous wearing that. What did he say when they first told him he had to wear that outfit?

To be continued at Cali Coast Day 6 Part 1.