We’ve been traveling for ten days now and slept in another town almost every night and have constant regret over not having enough time to spend in the places we see but also look very much forward to our next destination. Little time to just sit around, so it’s gonna be a short post again.
Monterey
After the barbecue with our old neighbors, first stop was Monterey. We’d quickly visited this seaside town once before, but only to have a quick bit there. This time we discovered that it’s a really nice, quiet place with beautiful wood houses and lush green gardens. Deers wander freely through the streets, birds everywhere and life in the sea is so special that we even watched a documentary about it on German TV a while ago. There’s all kinds of freaky underwater life and rare sea otters that you can actually see from the coast (although Koos had mistaken them for sea lions initially. TV docus can give you a distorted feel for proportions apparently).
They decided to show a bit of the vibrant sea life to the general public with a sea aquarium built within the buildings of an old sardine canning factory. It’s supposed to be one of the biggest and most beautiful in the world. We’ve seen only a few sea aquariums before, but we tend to believe that: it’s huge and very impressive.
17 Mile Drive
From Monterey we took the 17 Mile Drive to Highway 1. The 17 Mile Drive is quite typical for how beautiful natural spots are made accessible for people who don’t want to leave their cars. You just stop at all the signs that show you where to spot animals and special plants and trees. Even though it was foggy, we got some nice views and saw some ground animals.
Highway 1 and Big Sur
Big Sur is a huge nature reserve of which we got to see only a small bit, because of all the stops we’d made along the 17 Mile Drive.
Just where the fog ends, you can see the road we drove: Highway 1.
Big Sur is big.
At Piedras Blancas, just south of Big Sur, we observed this elephant seal colony. They constantly make farting and snorting sounds and throw around sand over their own and other’s bodies. Some are as heavy as a small car and they look like a bag full of liquid fat when they hop on the beach. Besides throwing around sand, they like pushing their trunks into the sand and then blow out.
Los Angeles
We heard some bad things about Los Angeles, so we were prepared for run down buildings, badly maintained streets and lots of crazy homeless. It may partly be because we stayed at a nice hotel in West Hollywood, but we both actually found it a very pleasant city.
Only because of the insane traffic situation, we wouldn’t prefer it over San Francisco. We though we’d seen some big highways, but it was nothing compared with the six lane minimum width mesh that’s laid out over this huge city. Worst thing is that all roads seemed continuously congested and we were even following the advice of not driving around meal times.
LA is kind of what we expected, but much better looking. There are tall palm trees everywhere, lots of other trees and blooming plants. The architecture is much more modern and varied than in the Bay Area and there are a lot of art galleries (sadly the ones Koos particularly wanted to visited were closed).
Despite the traffic, it’s just fun to drive on streets like Sunset Boulevard, Mulholland Drive and see names like Beverly Hills and Compton that after all Hollywood stuff we watched sound so familiar but only get really real when you’re there. Where San Francisco’s full of billboard ads for apps and web stuff, LA takes it a bit further. Seemingly every show no one has yet heard of, gets signs with huge proportions that we’d only seen in developing countries:
To get a feel for the scale of things, look down from the butt of lady on the right.This is not just along some highway, but at Santa Monica Blvd. We think the poster is supposed to show a marketing director thinking “OMG I spent my whole budget on buying this wall and now I can’t afford a designer who understands perspective”.
Besides eating lots of good food at the restaurants Melinda advised us, we visited some special buildings in Downtown LA:
Designed by Frank Gehry, the Walt Disney Concert Hall is quite a striking building. We went inside and took the free audio tour, which was well worth the time.
Built in 1893, the Bradbury Building is really old for American standards. The big bright atrium with cast iron stairs looks pretty cool, so the building was used as a set in many movies, like Bladerunner.
LA was our southernmost stop and now we’re at the nothernmost point of our trip: Portland. It was a 1000 mile drive getting here, so we’ve made a few stopovers in between. We’ll tell you more later!
Edit September 20th: Added elephant seal picture.
prachtige foto! ook weer leuuk dat jullie weer terugkomen de 25ste welkom
Dank je!
Koos & Ruth, We also visited the sea aquarium in Monterey and I think you are right it’s may be one of the most beautiful in the world. We didn’t travel to Los Angeles when we visited you in July, when I red your blog I suppose that we have missed a good opportunity.
When I saw the reflections of Ruth on the photo of the Walt Disney Concert Hall se seems to be pregnant. Wel that’s good news!.
We hope to see you both soon in Holland
Greeting your Father
(Nice story and good picture (you must be a son of me!)
Dank je en je schoondochter heeft ook haar best gedaan hier hoor 😉
Hoi Koos en Ruth,
Wat een prachtige gebouwen 🙂 dat aquarium ook! Klinkt ook alsof jullie goed gelachen hebben om de zandsproeiende eliphant seals!
Tot snel weer!
Sam.
Ps ik zag dat de treintickets naar Berlijn in de aanbieding zijn 🙂
Hi koos en Ruth!
Mooie verhalen en foto’s! Jullie hebben veel gezien zo te lezen en ook heel afwisselend! En dus binnenkort naar Berlijn!!! Komen jullie eerst nog even langs Nederland 🙂
Goede reis!
Groetjes Annelies
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