Hyatt Regency Monterey

Finally left the noisy dorm room yay. Saw some massive waves along the coast towards Monterey. Stopped off in Santa Cruz, not much going on in Fall! Apparently it's wooden rollercoaster is a national monument! Got to Monterey and found a visitor centre for a map. Hotel man upgraded us to a deluxe king, had a microwave and a fridge! Watched lots of TV ...

From Santa Cruz we cruzed (lame) down PCH a bit more and were headed down to Big Sur. I hadn't even heard what Big Sur was (a mountain, park, restaurant, bar, beach?) but Christa and Ryan assured good things correctly. The ride was beautiful as before with blue blue water, cliffs, no real towns...just ocean on one side, earth on the other. Damn that winding road though. <br><br>None of us really knew what Big Sur had to offer but when we ...

... of the waves...(don't think it was Talon though).<br><br>05/11/2009 - After a lovely lie-in, we woke up to a gorgeous breakfast of berries and porridge. We headed back into town and found a 'secret walk' along a river. The houses along the path had private little gardens right on the rivers edge. It looked like such a lovely place to live. <br><br>After grabbing lunch at a cafe (Jim had a Philly cheese-steak and ...

... in England before leaving but loved that they were popular over here. Determined that this was the year of their take-off across the pond.<br>-My Museum. NO, MY Museum being built next door, date TBA.<br>-Sprinting up hills being me. Just had to run. (Randi you know)<br>-"Burning Man's got Lola's name written all over it" -Matt, haha, yes it does.<br>-"Sounds like Katie Towers doesn't do halves."<br>-What the Brits think of America: "I want a corndog and Montell Williams is good."....WHAT?

... Robert Louis Stevenson as saying it's "the greatest meeting of land and sea in the world". <br><br>We managed a surprisingly early start - everyone was assembled in front of the B&amp;B by just after 8am, and we were off. The objective was to reach Carmel for breakfast. Unfortunately getting out of San Francisco took longer than planned, so hunger forced us to stop at Santa Cruz, a quiet seaside town just off the PCH. We drove into a ...

Revitalised, we were back on the road to Monterey. Once again, we stupidly chose to travel during rush hour and encountered quite some traffic. It was not too bad, and we got to Monterey in good time. <br><br>We found our campground without too much of a hassle and were pleased to find that there were plenty of spaces available. It is quite a strange campground, as it is just part of a normal park, and suddenly there are these 40 campsites. It is not very busy here at ...

... it was so cool!<br><br> After leaving the park, we drove to the fisherman&#8217;s Wharf. It was pretty much a board walk with lots of restaurants and little shops. We ate seafood for dinner. I think it was the first time that I had gone to a fancy seafood restaurant. It was really good. To top off the fun day, we were able to find a camp ground that had spaces. It was great!<br><br>~Amber

... Next stop was the Jellies exhibit. W.O.W. we've seen pretty Jellies before, but the exhibit there was amazing. And we saw the most absolutely fantastically amazing jellies we've ever seen... they're transparent/white, with little tiny feelers that are so close together they refract the light into a rainbow, like a prism. So you have little rainbow lights running up and down the sides of these jellys. They're called "comb jellys". There ...

... some Mexican food at a place on the shore with the best view out to sea through huge windows and had a wander through the town for a while. Back at the hostel we got a private room to share as it worked out as cheap as a dorm - bonus. Beautiful hostel - really friendly and with huge squashy sofas in the lounge area - perfect for chilling out and getting rested before the drive down the coast the next day. We had been told ...

... not happy with as our parking was otherwise perfect! For the last few days we have been travelling with my old school friend Leonard, who came along to Yosemite along with his friend. We left them this morning after a pancake breakfast and then we set about exploring the city for a couple of hours. We did the usual tourist trail by getting a tram to fishermans wharf (we got on a new tram by mistake but got it for free as we had not change..we smiled sweety!) I ...