The Zakun Great Coastal Adventure

was completed successfully last night when we drove in to LA to visit plasticmom. The California coast can be "temperamental" this time of year, but we lucked out with awesome weather the entire trip. Beautifully sunny days with no fog.

Day 1: Wednesday Palo Alto to Monterey

9:00 am: We started Wednesday morning when we picked up our rental car in Palo Alto, drove [slowly] through the Santa Cruz mountains and ended up in Pescadero right on time [according to my carefully calibrated schedule] for lunch at Duarte's Tavern.

11:30 am: Duarte's Tavern Lunch. We enjoyed the cream of artichoke soup, the cream of chile soup, a crab sandwich and a slice of their famous Olallieberry pie a la mode. I'd read about the pie in one of my favorite books about eating pie across the country so I was determined to go to Duarte's. The pie was tasty, but my favorites were the two cream soups. As we were leaving, I overheard a couple ordering, "half and half" which caused me to pause until I surmised that they were ordering half artichoke/half chile soup. An excellent idea indeed and an idea I plan to use next time I'm kicking around the dusty small town of Pescadero. We headed back out on Highway 1 and headed to Monterey.

2:30 pm: We finally pulled into our hotel on Cannery Row after two unsuccessful attempts thwarted by road construction and unexpected one way streets. Tourist towns, we decided, are characterized by the ubiquitous fudge shop and Monterey certainly did not disappoint. The waterfront was lovely and we enjoyed the Monterey Aquarium where we saw otters, sardines, penguins and jellyfish. We did see an octopus, but unlike the rest of the aquarium, it was less than impressive.

5:00 pm: Back strolling the Monterey waterfront, we happen upon the Spirit of Monterey wax museum. I happen to love all things fake including fake food and fake wax people so I insisted we go in for the 20 minute narrated history tour of Monterey's colorful past. I was not disappointed, it was just as kitchy as I expected and very informative.

7:00 pm: Too lazy to leave our hotel and walk 20 minutes to the wharf for some potentially bad food, we decided to eat dinner at the Duck Club in our hotel since plasticmom had offered to buy dinner. My duck entree was delicious, but Adam's swordfish was not the best. Note: The Duck Club has an amazing view of the water, but the view is lost at night since it's pitch black outside so we would not recommend splurging at the Duck Club for dinner.