Monterey - Part 1

I picked them up early Friday morning. It was a trip that I had long planned and anticipated. Finally, on a nice sunny morning in May of 2005, Angel, her friend Myra and I drove to San Francisco through the 101 then to PCH. First we passed Paso Robles, then drove by Cumbria, then Hearst Castle in San Simeon. As we approached, Carmel, we had been driving for over 9 hours total but seemed like we just left. We stopped by Pebble Beach, Pacific Grove, then the Cannery Row in Monterey.

That was how I always remembered Monterey until this weekend's trip with Angel and Rafael. This was supposed to be our 3rd anniversary celebration but didn't happen as we wanted to avoid the Memorial Day weekend rush.

We left around 930 AM. The drive was nice. The temp had just started to heat up. We dropped off Gra'ma at Ed's in Fremont. Spent a few minutes for Rafael to stretch and appreciate Ed's pieces of bird houses. He also took out a nice remote-controlled Mini Cooper that he was going to hand down to his godson, Raffy. Then we headed off to our mini weekend trip to Monterey. We thought it would be a good idea for Rafael to see the Monterey Bay Aquarium after his Tita Betty had told him about it about early this year

Getting into CA 17 was slow. It seemed that we weren't the only ones headed to the Pacific Coast Highway on a late Saturday morning. It didn't last long however as we were in Santa Cruz after 45 minutes.




First stop was lunch at a place called Cole's BBQ in Santa Cruz which I had read about. It had decent Yelp reviews and are in business for about 30 years already. They must be doing something right.







I ordered their popular tri-tip sandwich while Angel tried there pork BBQ ribs. Though I would've wanted the ribs to be a little more tender, the BBQ sauce was good and tasty. The tri-tip was just the way I wanted it.