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Monterey Bay weekend
Mar. 1st, 2006 09:33 amI took a long weekend last week, heading off to Monterey Bay with Nick, spending a rare couple of days together. --It was amusing to realize how much a non-Californian doesn't "innately" know! Take me to New York and you will see amusing...
Anyhow.
We stayed at the Centrella Inn in Pacific Grove. We were supposed to have an independent cottage, but instead ended up with the lower floor of a bigger cottage. It was really nice. Had a little wet bar in the dining area, a little living room, a bath with a big old fashioned tub (mightily in need of a safety rail) and a smallish bedroom (with big closet). Tv and vcr. Tiny stereo with radio. The place had lovely gardens, and a very nice common area with a yummy breakfast, plus evening before-supper snacks as well. It's LGBT friendly. It was really cool to be able to use that as a search criteria when hunting down a place to stay. :-)
Friday evening we went to Carmel to have a semi-dress-up dinner. We ate at The Grill on Ocean Avenue, and it was marvelous! The food was delicious. It was a smallish place, but really nicely done up in the light-fabrics dark-wood comfy slouchy elegant kinda way. There was paper on the tables and crayons, so I ended up drawing an Enterprise (the one thing I can kinda draw), which got the attention of a pair of guys at the next table. They were from, I presume by their accents, Australia, and we had a fun conversation about wine tasting- they'd spent six days in Napa! Nick doesn't really do wine, so I didn't taste in Monterey (there were plenty of other choices and it hasn't been particularly long since I did a tasting, though I did try a local sauvignon blanc that night, which didn't do much for me). Anyhow, it was fun chatting with them while waiting for coffee and port.
A bottle of absinthe had accompanied us to Monterey, called Absinth King of Spirits, with wonderful phrases like " more than 200 year old recipe" and "for experts only" belows its label picture of Van Gogh. It was.... herb-y to say the least; lots of woody bits were floating in the brew. It tasted... well, strong and herb-y, but not nearly as vile as the Chinese wine I tried some time back. It was also nicely intoxicating. The odd thing was the next day it left a sort of outline of where a hangover would be, but no actual pain.
Saturday, we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium of course! The big tanks there are just so cool. And all the alien-looking jellies floating in their tiny worlds were very cool and slightly scary. Gotta love the sea otters... got to see the end of their feeding. It was cold out but not raining, so we were able to take a couple of breaks out of doors. It was just incredibly nice to be there when it wasn't mobbed with people!
Saturday evening we ate back in Pacific Grove, another very nice place called Passionfish. The patrons seemed a touch more self-consciously posh there to me, but again the food was excellent, and our wait person was very good. Tea is apparently a big deal in Pacific Grove, everywhere seemed to have a big tea selection. We had brunch one day at a downward sloping old Victorian called the Red House Cafe- they had a zillion teas! And wonderful breakfast food (which of course is pretty easy to do, but it's still worth mentioning).
Sunday we spent a bit more time touring Carmel, finding a nice knife store and alternate spirituality bookshop among the home decor and clothing shops, before heading on home. It was all pretty beautiful, from the craggy coastline to the Irish-green hills.
Anyhow.
We stayed at the Centrella Inn in Pacific Grove. We were supposed to have an independent cottage, but instead ended up with the lower floor of a bigger cottage. It was really nice. Had a little wet bar in the dining area, a little living room, a bath with a big old fashioned tub (mightily in need of a safety rail) and a smallish bedroom (with big closet). Tv and vcr. Tiny stereo with radio. The place had lovely gardens, and a very nice common area with a yummy breakfast, plus evening before-supper snacks as well. It's LGBT friendly. It was really cool to be able to use that as a search criteria when hunting down a place to stay. :-)
Friday evening we went to Carmel to have a semi-dress-up dinner. We ate at The Grill on Ocean Avenue, and it was marvelous! The food was delicious. It was a smallish place, but really nicely done up in the light-fabrics dark-wood comfy slouchy elegant kinda way. There was paper on the tables and crayons, so I ended up drawing an Enterprise (the one thing I can kinda draw), which got the attention of a pair of guys at the next table. They were from, I presume by their accents, Australia, and we had a fun conversation about wine tasting- they'd spent six days in Napa! Nick doesn't really do wine, so I didn't taste in Monterey (there were plenty of other choices and it hasn't been particularly long since I did a tasting, though I did try a local sauvignon blanc that night, which didn't do much for me). Anyhow, it was fun chatting with them while waiting for coffee and port.
A bottle of absinthe had accompanied us to Monterey, called Absinth King of Spirits, with wonderful phrases like " more than 200 year old recipe" and "for experts only" belows its label picture of Van Gogh. It was.... herb-y to say the least; lots of woody bits were floating in the brew. It tasted... well, strong and herb-y, but not nearly as vile as the Chinese wine I tried some time back. It was also nicely intoxicating. The odd thing was the next day it left a sort of outline of where a hangover would be, but no actual pain.
Saturday, we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium of course! The big tanks there are just so cool. And all the alien-looking jellies floating in their tiny worlds were very cool and slightly scary. Gotta love the sea otters... got to see the end of their feeding. It was cold out but not raining, so we were able to take a couple of breaks out of doors. It was just incredibly nice to be there when it wasn't mobbed with people!
Saturday evening we ate back in Pacific Grove, another very nice place called Passionfish. The patrons seemed a touch more self-consciously posh there to me, but again the food was excellent, and our wait person was very good. Tea is apparently a big deal in Pacific Grove, everywhere seemed to have a big tea selection. We had brunch one day at a downward sloping old Victorian called the Red House Cafe- they had a zillion teas! And wonderful breakfast food (which of course is pretty easy to do, but it's still worth mentioning).
Sunday we spent a bit more time touring Carmel, finding a nice knife store and alternate spirituality bookshop among the home decor and clothing shops, before heading on home. It was all pretty beautiful, from the craggy coastline to the Irish-green hills.
