New Years Trip: Day 2: Monterey

Our second day began after a short night's sleep.  The conversation with Mira and Glen lasted in to the wee hours, but not too wee, but still insufficient.

So we prepared ourselves for departure and our first stop was breakfast: The Breakfast Club.  This was a pretty basic place, nothing particularly fancy, but they had quite the impressive selection of benedicts: crab cake, corned beef hash, salmon and many more. The hollandaise was flowing by the bucketful.  I got an omelette with a biscuit and gravy and a side of hash browns.  The biscuit and gravy was particularly good.  We also ordered one of their specialities: Bananas Foster French toast.  Equally intriguing, but we didn't have room for it was the egg-nog pecan baked French toast (they had quite a selection of Frenched toasts as well).

We ate more than we should, but you're supposed to eat like a king at breakfast right?  In true Fisher fashion we discussed where we would eat breakfast the following day before the current gorge-fest adjourned.

Our next stop took us on a lovely walk to Lover's Point (apparently shortened from Jesus Lovers Point). It did seem as though there were a lot of nuns around, perhaps not coincidentally.  The ocean cooperated spectacularly: it crashed photogenically against the rocky coast and did the cute little oceany things you expect it to do. It was adorable, all posing and whooshy.  We saw seals beached like fuzzy slugs and otters who were no doubt doing something cute but were too far out in the ocean for us to see clearly.

The sun came out and it was quite warm (not that warm, but enough to at least remove the winter coat I brought).  Given the continuous walking and having the opportunity to push Mira and Glen's daughter Kyna in the stroller kept my body temperature at an even keel. I was just happy that Kyna didn't seem as terrified of me as the last time we met. She hardly screamed at all at the mere site of me.

There was a cove that must have captured the heat well since several people were playing on the beach as if it were July, and children frolicked in the waves.  They were either from Alaska and this was warm to them, or they were completely insane.  It would explain their howls of laughter, their sad and terrible howls of mad laughter.  It would also explain why the dead seal floating on the waves nearby didn't seem to bother them.

We walked back to the car and drove to downtown Monterey to wander the Fisherman's Wharf and meet up with John, Terry and Lara Fisher.  We wandered down restaurant row sampling the clam chowder the restaurants were using to try and lure us in.  We weren't falling for it, though.  We had plans on visiting the Museum Of Monterey, or MOM.

MOM had a really cool display / fundraiser idea: miniatures.  There were tons of them, and tons of different styles, local, regional, amateur and professional and running the gamut from paintings or drawings, photos, to small sculptures, and in a variety of media, styles and subject matter.  The idea was you could purchase raffle tickets, and each participating work had a box under it where you would put your tickets.  If your ticket is chosen, you win that work.  It's a pretty brilliant idea, and many of the works were really interesting, so we bought 7 tickets for $30, and chose which works we wanted.  They initially told me to come back tomorrow, but I told him we were leaving town, and that I had already scoped out my selections, so I would only take me a minute.  I'm sure he was happy to have one last sale for the day.

By now it was beginning to get dark and we had our sites and appetites set on dinner.  Mira, Kyna and Beth and the rest of the Fisher clan departed for Mira's.  Gregory, David and I found a Thai restaurant that seemed pretty good. We often get the same things at Thai restaurants to judge their quality.  They had really good Tom Kah soup and the rice was good.  The mild Panang was more like a medium.  It had a good flavor though, and I would have to say 3.5 out of 5.

We are wrapping up today a bit early since tomorrow we have to depart for Napa, which will be a good 3 hour drive.