AERIANE COHEN

Everyone knows, there is something magical in travelling. Preparing the luggage, discussing the route, picking up the hotels to stay and restaurants to enjoy the food. Though sometimes you want to «go with the flow » and pick places following your gut. Especially with such a tool as Yelp with many other people's reviews and photos of the places and meals.
And our trip was exactly like this.

We spent in San Francisco couple of days with my friend who used to live there. And it was love at first sight. I will never forget this feeling when I saw for the first time in my life New York where I live now. It was like big fire in the chest, under the skin and in the heart. It is that feeling that you cannot describe, and they call it Love. With SF was the same. It is very complicated and multi-edging city, with scary and ugly areas and with amazing and majestic at the same moment. People mostly have the different experience about this city as I understand, and it makes San Francisco even more magical.
By the way, flight with Delta was very comfortable, seats in Boing 767-300 were superb and by the end of the flight, I did not feel any muscle aches. We took our small Pomeranian with us, and he went through six hours flight nicely and without any problems.

In short, here I will put the link for places to eat that we enjoyed our stay in SF.

If you are close to Marina area - Tacolicious and Mile's Drive-in.
If you are near Japan town, I would highly recommend State Bird Provisions.
If you like BBQ-

And so, after spending enough hard time biking up&down on the SF hills, we headed off to the south. I checked Yelp in the case of beautiful places for a breakfast on-the-way and have found Los Gatos. It was full of people( at 715 am on Saturday), and we had to wait for about a half an hour. The portions were huge( we took to go all leftovers and finished on the lunch) and everything was delicious. The atmosphere there is very retro. As an interior designer, I can say that all the furniture, lighting, and even wall's paint was like from another generation. But it gives to this place charm and uniqueness.
When we came to Monterey, first of all, we checked in Monterey Tides Hotel. I have read all reviews right before, and it was very controversial. Some people said that the experience was horrible, they felt like the hotel by itself and area around was under construction. But some people had the exquisite experience. So we decided to risk and stay there one night. The Hotel is located right on the waterfront. We got room 222( my favorite number and I always feel little happier when it comes to my life) and also we had the view right in the Pacific. We were not so lucky with the weather as it was cloudy and windy but the pool was open and water there was warm. It was a lot of people on the beach, so we did not feel like we are all alone. And the whole experience reminded me Normandy France, area near Le Mon San Michele.
Must-have to visit in Monterey is, of course, Aquarium. I have been in Aquarium in many different cities and countries, but this one is unbelievable. Go!
If you like wine tasting and meet this greyish weather a little depressing you should get the wine tasting passport in Carmel-on-the-sea for 65$( 90$ worth) and start your preparation for a dinner three-four hours ahead. Carmel is the beautiful, cozy town with a lot of galleries and excellent restaurants( from easy to very chic).
On the next morning, I was eager to find famous local sourdough bread and it was not so easy as it seems. But we finally did it. And stuff made splendid Sandwiches in Pavel's bakery( the oldest one in town). Again the portions were huge, so I could eat just half( which was very convenient for my husband who finished it later on during our hiking).
The next two attraction points of this area are for wild nature lovers and hikers.
First one is 17-Miles Drive(Pebble Beach). This area is well known for its luxurious Resorts and Golf fields. Yelpers are very controversial about it, but I think it is worth visiting. Yes, it is a lot of gorgeous houses and closed for public visiting spots. But they have most of the white sand beaches open to visitors and much more. Such as Shepherd's Knoll, vista points that give a grand view of Monterey Bay and The Santa Cruz mountains; Spanish Bay; Bird Rock; Cypress Point Lookout and The Lone Cypress; etc.

And the last thing I would like to mention here is Point Lobos, State Natural Reserve, «…the greatest meeting of land and water in the world» Francis McComas. I don't know about «the Greatest» but for sure one of the best. Thanks to Point Lobos Foundation for keeping this area as wild and untouchable as possible. I was the witness to a very funny situation: I was sitting near the trail and enjoying the view when the family passed by me. The kid asked parents: this bird is fake? And everybody starts to laugh. Because that bird was too beautiful and too natural, it was too peaceful and perfectly framed in this amazing mother nature. This situation is very reflective of what is happening in the whole world( by that I mean Earth of course) right now. We are in that period when there are less and less not touched places by human hand like this. And we should make the very strong effort to keep it as much and as long as we can. I highly recommend the movie on this topic, How to Let go of the World and Love all the things Climate can't change directed by HBO.

And so back to our post, the full trail in Point Lobos is about 3,5 – 4 hours. And if you have this time to spend on you should do. Must-have!

Thank you so much for reading, I hope it was interesting and helpful.
And next travelling post will be about Mono Hot Springs in Yosemite Park.
Stay tuned, subscribe and feel free to ask me any questions about our trip.

Xoxo,
Arie.