Carmel By The Sea

Today we had a trip out to Carmel-by-the-Sea, about 100 miles South of here, and as the name implies, on the coast. Carmel is a place a lot of my colleagues rave about; it's a posh little seaside resort, in a beautiful place, and relatively unspoilt.

We got in our tiny car and started driving South. As we travelled out of the Bay Area, and beyond the Santa Cruz mountains, we reached farmland. Everywhere around the road were artichokes, strawberries, and what looked like sprouts. The landscape was very different to the Bay Area. It also included 9 miles of road in which it was mandatory to turn on headlights during the day, although frankly I've no idea why. Anyway, pretty soon we reached Carmel.

Carmel is packed with places to eat. First up were the giant pretzels:

Whilst eating these, we were sized up by the local seagulls. These gulls are really no match for the monster, ice-cream-pinching seagulls we are familiar with from the South West in the UK. Our finely-honed skills in gull watching and food hiding meant that we didn't have any hassle from the gulls, and we ate our pretzels without incident.

Then we took a wander around Carmel. It has numerous galleries full of original artwork, with price tags in the thousands of dollars. There wasn't much that we liked the look of; it was all pleasant enough, just not exciting enough to shell out what a quiz show might call BIG MONEY. Carmel also has toy and "tat" shops, and it's always interesting to see how kids are educated through literature in different cultures:

This is not Bob the Builder. Perhaps it's Sally the Structural Engineer.

Of course, there was always time for some more food. As I queued for my early afternoon macchiato, I noticed this, and having heard of such a thing but never had one, I took the plunge, purely in the interests of research:

This thing sounds pretty exciting and novel, but I've got to say, it's really quite close to the humble choc ice. The "bread" in the sandwich is very similar to digestive biscuits:

It was pretty chunky, but overall it's just a fancy choc ice. Listen, this is not me doing it down; I love a choc ice as much as the next person.

And so to the sea. The beach at Carmel is beautiful - fine, white sand, with wonderfully clear, green water. The town is in the middle of a large bay, making this a perfect setting.

I have not bothered straightening the horizon in this shot. If it was really like this, the ocean would spill out.

We drove back up the coast, all the way to Half Moon Bay, which is North of where we live in Palo Alto. Autumn is upon us, faithful readers: Half Moon Bay claims to be the pumpkin capital of the world, and has a pumpkin festival in a couple of weeks. As you can imagine, at least one of our party is very, very excited about that!