Outside San Francisco Route ONE
Two places you MUST visit as you go south down the Route one is Monterey Bay Aquarium. Aquariums are boring I hear you say. This place is wonderful and like no other aquarium in the world. It is more like a marine preservation research centre. It is set in an old Fish cannery that has been made elegant full of good quality craft shops and cafes. Inside the Aquarium is an area where you can see wild Californian sea otters feeding on fish and crabs laying on their backs floating whilst devouring their meal. If you are lucky you might see baby otters. It was the setting for the Star trek 4 film about the whales.

A few miles south is Carmel-by-the sea. This is the upmarket seaside resort that Clint Eastwood made famous by becoming it’s Mayor. The beach is nice and the shops are very unusual. You can go for a dip in the sea and then buy a £2,000,000 painting or a £250,000 Maclaren supercar.

I was not very impressed by Route One coast road. It is pretty but everything I read went over board on how fantastic it was. My expectations I think were too high. One of the problems of the road is that there are not many places you can stop and look at the view. One good tip is that we soon learnt that if a sign pointed the way to a State Park you should pull off and explore what was on offer. They normally did not disappoint. Most have small entrance fees.