Notre Dame Des Victoires Church

Another early start thanks to jet lag but we had to be up to go and pick up our rental car. Phil managed to negotiate his way out of the city centre like a boss (in a red Ford Fiesta) and I did some semi helpful navigating. We had decided to head to Monterey as we did have time to go to Big Sur (it was going to take 2.5 hours to get to Monterey and we had to have the car back with petrol in it by 6) We hit the road (freeway, highway?) and found some crap local radio stations that weren’t playing 1. Country 2. Mexican music or 3. Christian rock. We got to Monterey just before midday and went to fisherman’s wharf where we had lunch. Phil finally had some oysters and I had scallops wrapped in bacon. We felt stuffed so walked along the seafront to Cannery Row which was just a load of touristy shops and an aquarium that was charging $50 to get in. I’d want to see a great white for that money so we decided to give it a swerve and got in the car to go down to Carmel which was stunning. The sun was out and we walked along the white sandy beach dipping our toes in the freezing Pacific Ocean. We didn’t have much time there so we had to brush the sand off our toes after about half an hour and head back to San Francisco. Because we are so clever and organised we made in back with half an hour to spare so we rewarded ourselves with a flight of beers in this cool little Japanese place. After a quick pit stop at the hotel we decided to have an American McDonald’s (after we checked out Target) and it was not quite the experience we were after. This place felt shady, like we’d stepped into a back alley branch in the Bronx not one on the main Street in San Francisco. It looked like it had inherited all the cast offs from old McDonald’s branches in the 90s and felt a little shady. We smashed up our Big Mac meals, inducing some mild indigestion and got our of there ASAP. Turns out London Road Maccas isn’t so bad after all. In order to make ourselves feel normal again we went back to Mikeller and had a drink before doing our usual pass out before 10pmLeia mais