WCT 2.1: first two days

 [reminder: wCt is West Coast Trip]

We’re done with 2 days of 4 in NoCal.

KG arrived “early” Monday morning and we spent the day doing SF and environs.  More on that later. 

But this is a golf trip, so we’ll start with today. 

We played Pebble Beach, which is my retirement “gift” (what it has been designated has been a moving target — birthday present? Waste of money? 😁)

We were told it might be the best weather day of the year.  It was sunny, not windy and got to 75. It was actually hot.  The locals were complaining about the heat. ROFL. 

One of the famous holes there is #7, which this picture shows you the day and the awesome setting for the little hole. 

We had a great time.  Our partners, Lea and Kevin, from Mammoth, were congenital and good players.  Our caddie, Tito, was good, too.  He was quite a character, having surf bummed for 17 years in Maui and generally been around.  He also had a recent knee replacement.  Said he sat around and ate ice cream.  A man after my heart. :)

Here we are on the 18th tee. 

Going back (and this is a quick run-through, John): I picked KG up at 10 and he was hungry.  He found a place and directed me to — the produce terminal for San Bruno. 🤣 we found another place not far away that was much better.  But the line of the day was “what kind of toast do you want” and KG said “white” and the guy said “we don’t have white toast.”  What??!?!!?!?  California.  They did have sour dough, which I guess isn’t what they consider white bread.  Huh. 

Then he wanted to see the redwoods, so we shot across (okay, the rental is a Toyota Corolla so “shot” is a lie”) the Golden Gate Bridge, grabbed pictures at the vista point there (hence) and saw the redwoods.  They were open despite the shutdown because they are a special designation (I was told).

Then in to San Fran. We had a Ghirardelli Sundae for “lunch”, then took the cable car up to Lombard St.  In an heroic effort, I walked about 2/3 of the way down Lombard St AND back up!!! My heart rate did not go down for about an hour. :)

Cable car down to turnaround and walked over to the sea lions

Then we drove up to Coit Tower (yes, we hit a lot of the city’s greatest hits in a day) and he went up in in (I do neither heights nor steps at this point).

Requisite pic from there:

Then down to the Embarcadero and dinner. 

Food porn coming. 

We had tiger prawns from prelim

And he had the locally caught spring trout:

I had the chowder, but, in a long and involved story, I ended up getting it comped because…well, the wait person said “we had an error of communications.”

Then we drove to Monterey, where we are staying at the Inn at Spanish Bay.  It might be the nicest room I’ve ever had — they have free snacks!!! And robes.  And both a tub and shower.  And turn down service. 

The food here is great too. 

We had breakfast burritos for breakfast.  

We had dinner reservations here in the INN, too.  It’s called Roy’s.  It’s won James Beard awards.  It’s Hawaiian fusion cuisine (so says the promos). 

We had the tiger prawns (a theme of the trip) and beef spring rolls 

I had the roasted chicken with red curry. 

KG had the surf and turf which was swordfish with spare ribs. (Hawaiian fusion, right?)

And he had to have the mango cheesecake for dessert.  That’s a mango gel layer.  He loves cheesecake and he said it was great. 

Worth noting is part of the charm of the place is they knew it was our birthday.  There were birthday cards in the room when we checked in and the desk people have all said happy birthday “to both of you”, including today as we checked in at the golf course.  

Been a good trip so far.  Here’s our SOP shot on 18th tee box — this was facing away from the the lodge and 18th green.  You can see the scenery and how lovely the day was. 

Also, part of the charm, there’s a deck to watch golf facing west to the ocean (which is right there) and each evening a bag piper pipes the sun down.  We have video…Okay, I’ll put it here.