From Lombard St to Monterey

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Orange juice and breakfast bars again. Yuck. But quick and easy. Checkout isn't until 12 so we head up to Lombard Steet - the famous bit - and arrive around 10am. Not too many people this time of morning. We walk down it, then up again, and by the time we reach the top after taking a lot of pictures and getting towards 11am, it's starting to get crowded.

Back to the motel - checkout and head back to the Wharf to find another Alcatraz book that Karina decided she should have bought yesterday. We finally found it, then had In'n'Out Burger for lunch. I should've got a double cheeseburger burger. 😞

Next stop, Columbus Street where Karina had seen some buildings with artwork that she wanted to photograph. She also got some good shots of Alcatraz in the same area. Final SF destination - City Hall - which is quite impressive! We filled up the car, and headed out to Highway 1 - the coastal highway.

The weather was actually starting to fine up now - just as we were leaving! Blue skies over SF itself, though just outside it was still rather foggy.

The plan was to drive to Monterey, about 2 1/2 hours south of SF. I wanted to check out "Silicon Valley" if indeed it was on the way, but it wasn't really - at least any areas that I knew of. We passed by Half Moon Bay and Pacifica, but didn't really stop at all.

Our first real stop was Santa Cruz towards the late afternoon. Quite a strange little town. It was, as Karina described, Double bay meets Newtown. Expensive boutique clothing stores interspersed with 2nd-hand indie record stores, surf clothing shops and the odd book shop. And some just plain weird shops. Perhaps fitting that Karina saw a T-shirt that said "Keep Santa Cruz weird!".

We wandered for about an hour. I bought some new thongs - sorry, flip-flops - from Gap no less, but that was all the shopping we could afford there. They wanted USD$25 for a 2nd-hand N64 - back home they're AUD$19. Time to move on.

We checked into Monterey in time for dinner, asking the motel clerk for a recommendation for a good Thai restaurant. Only then did I think to Skype Penny and ask her, but she was already asleep in Spain. In any case, the clerk's recommendation was quite good!

Back at the motel we decided on our next stop - Morro Bay - and Karina found a deal for $39 a night!!! Time to crash.

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