After winding up our 3 day excursion to Yosemite, we started the next leg of our foray into California – the west coast road trip. We hadn’t really organised anything for this part of the holiday preferring to see where the road would take us. Being an Apple Inc. tragic (since 1980), I had hopes of visiting the hallowed campus at No.1 Infinity Loop but it was not to be. Instead, we decided to head cross country to Carmel By The Sea where we could start the Pacific Coast drive the following day. I love the American terrain, ever changing, ever interesting. To see the rocky, fertile grounds of Yosemite give way to rolling hills of sunburnt grasses which, in turn, gave way to the lush coastal vegetation of Carmel was stunning.
Carmel itself is a pretty town peppered with fairytale shingle houses, smart weatherboard retreats and mock tudor tearooms. Its also unusual in that there are no street lights and houses aren’t numbered (which can make locating an address quite a challenge for the uninitiated). Its charming, old worldly and well-to-do. We only stayed a night there and sadly the weather had turned on us by the time we arrived. Still, its charms shone through and if we’d had the time we probably would of stayed another night.
Here’s a few quick snaps from around this beautiful seaside town.
Above: Even the rubbish bins are shingled!
You did a superb job at capturing a bit of Carmel’s character in your images. Nice work! bill
Cheers, Bill. Actually, I thought I had more photo’s of Carmel but remembered I let my youngest use the camera while we wandered around the streets. He took quite a few photo’s of his brother throwing a tennis ball and close up shots of flowers! Sometimes you can never take enough photo’s – particularly when you’re travelling. Thanks for your lovely comments though, much appreciated.
Reminds me of the movie Sideways… I can imagine the smell of rain, sitting out with a glass of wine and watching the world go by…
Hi Damian; funny, but you’re the second person to mention the movie Sideways this week… If we had had the time (and no kids) we would of gone out to Napa Valley and done a bit of imbibing. As it turned out, we found a gorgeous little Italian restaurant in Carmel (with the help of Yelp) and settled on a bottle of Napa Shiraz instead. It was beautiful.