Monterey, 17 MILE DRIVE, Lone CyprusTree, Carmel, Pebble Beach

The day out with Cub was awesome. 

Stressy Adolf was prepared to wait all of 2 minutes for Cub to arrive at our pick up point, he was seriously prepared to leave him behind, but after the most ridiculous FAFF of trying to collect people from their hotels in the middle of rush hour with trams hurtling towards us, we were finally on our way to Monterey, a town made famous by the author John Steinbeck. Oh and Monterey Jack cheese.

Monterey

The main attraction here is the world famous aquarium, but we chose to amble along the front with a cup of tea-to-go, (where DOES my boy get that from?) and along Cannery Row, which, in its heyday was busy with sardine canners.

Monterey had a BEAR FLAG BUILDING :)

It was lovely.

After lunch (yes, today we had lunch) we continued our drive with a much less Stressy Adolf (he'd obviously had a good lunch too) and paid the toll to drive along 17 MILE DRIVE stopping at BIRD ROCK where there was no plank, just good fun prancing about on the rocks that had not been christened by bird deposits.

By paying to drive along 17 MILE DRIVE  we were able to see the most photographed tree in North America, a 250 year old Lone Cypress Tree that has not only survived the elements but also fire. It is now the corporate logo and trademark of Pebble Beach company.

These trees only grow naturally in Pebble Beach and Pt Lobos, near Carmel.

We could see Pebble Beach Golf Course from the bus.

"Perfectly manicured greens" said the Husb.

Carmel-by-the-sea was delightful, we walked down the hill past tempting teashops and fairytale cottages ...

...to the beach. 

Carmel is voted as one of the top ten places to visit in the US every year  and ...

oh woop it just so happens, we have visited it :)  YAY.

You can just see the golf course bunkers of PEBBLE BEACH golf course where all the superstar golfers play.

Then we realised we could shimmy up the sand bit on to the course. 

Let's face it, if the golfer was rubbish and hit the ball over the edge on to the beach, HE would have to shimmy down and back up again to retrieve his ball wouldn't he?

Oh em gee, the ACTUAL PEBBLE BEACH GOLF COURSE.

Do we look nonchalant here? 

We were trying to look cool and casual...

while golfers who had paid hundreds of dollars were having a game.

Quick photo by the flag and then we scuttled back down to the beach feeling like naughty school children but also very smug. 

OMG OMG Pebble Beach Golf Course!

What a day!

And there was MORE!

(Did I write that yesterday too?)

We sweet-talked Stressy Adolf into dropping us off by the baseball ground, the AT&T Stadium because we had tickets for the GIANTS pre season warm up game v Oakland Athletic.

It was a local derby!

GO GIANTS!!!

Just look at the setting. 

Shiny moon, sparkly sea, a boat coming in, what a place for a ball game. 

WE ARE SF WE ARE GIANTS

It was an exhibition game v Athletics and we won 4-0 ("we") (!)

WE ARE SF WE ARE GIANTS

I loved it.

California Academy of Sciences, Lands End, Golden State Warriors

DAY 2

It was just as well we had a good breakfast....(and this is only part of it) because we had SUCH A BUSY DAY :) we nearly didn't have time to eat.

San Francisco looked nice in the early morning sun...

We HOHO bussed and soon arrived at the California Academy of Sciences,

one of the largest museums of natural history in the world, housing over 26 million exhibits. 

WOW, we could have spent all day here. 

A T Rex skeleton was waiting for us,

He seemed friendly enough.

Whales really ARE huge.

This was to be part of the WHALES exhibition, what a pity we were a day too early.

We chose to go up  3 floors of rainforest   that were abundant with beautiful parakeets, amazing blue headed birds, huge butterflies... (and very humid)

while below us, huge fish were swimming 

There was so much more we would have liked  to see, an observatory, a planetarium, penguins.... but time was running out.

It was a big tick for California Academy of Sciences and somewhere to revisit NEXT TIME we visit Cub.

Anyway, we hopped back on the bus which continued alongside Golden Gates Park.

Who would have thought that a Scotsman, who wouldn't take NO for an answer, was responsible for making good quality soil out of sand and horse manure to create one of San Francisco's greatest treasures, the  Golden Gates Park  after others before him had deemed it impossible. His name was John Maclaren  and his target was to plant ONE MILLION trees (apparently that target has nearly been reached.) Maclaren had the great idea of letting loose into the park 2 mountain lions and a grizzly bear called Monarch, who incidentally now lies, stuffed, in the California Academy of Sciences. Maclaren hated statues with a passion. He planted trees around them so they couldn't be seen and the statue that was given to him of himself in honour of creating the park was only found after his death, hidden in his basement, His statue is now in the park and can be seen from the bus. It is not on a plinth, but right down on the grass as close to nature as possible .

A working windmill.

The bus stopped at OCEAN BEACH so we hopped off.

We got off at Land's End and walked along the path to Mile Point.

 I was looking forward to my plank. 

It was a Zesty plank!

The Legion of Honor

Just across the golf course near Mile Point stands a Fine Arts Museum The Legion of Honor and we saw Rubens, Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Van Gogh... 

and Rodin's THE THINKER.

Heck what a great day and there's more! 

The HOHO bus drove us through  Chinatown and then up Nob Hill, we saw the Victorian houses called Painted Ladies, (houses painted with more than 5 colours) and we passed the house where Jimmy Hendrix lived.

We  even sang Scott Fitzgerald's one hit wonder.

GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS

Cub had got tickets for the basketball tonight  so we took a BART across the bridge to Oakland where they now play and what a hoot.

A relatively dull game suddenly became quite exciting at half time...

as they filmed a punch-up on court for an American soap, (there were at least 3 takes and the cheers got louder every time) and then the relatively dull game suddenly became ridiculously exciting as ...

Golden State warriors were 2 up with 7 seconds left,

then 1 down with 4 seconds left,

THEN

Harrison Barnes got the winner with 2 seconds to spare OMG!!!

62-13. #DubNation #Warriors90sNight pic.twitter.com/bKm4AnkZfD
— Golden St. Warriors (@warriors) April 3, 2015

GO WARRIORS! GO WARRIORS!

What a fantastic day. 

Did we have lunch? Did we even have dinner? Who cares.

GO WARRIORS!