Big Sur

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...Continued from yesterday:
     On Tuesday we headed back to California Highway 1 and this time drove 30 miles South from Monterey to Big Sur, the breath-taking mountainous stretch that runs for about 70 miles along the Central California coastline.

     Our first destination was lunch at Nepenthe, a restaurant built on a cliff 800 feet above the Pacific Ocean,

​...famous for the panoramic vista from the terrace of the mountains and the sea.

      Though we arrived at the restaurant’s opening at 11:30 am, there was already a waiting list, but fortunately not a long one, so we had about 10 minutes to stroll around the restaurant and take in the view.

     We got a seat on the edge of the terrace with a wonderful view.

​     However, as we were perched  atop a steep cliff I got butterflies when I looked down and was careful to keep my feet tucked in.

                The service was slow and the menu was way pricey. My veggie sandwich cost $17.50,

​…and Tom’s crab sandwich was $24.50.

     The sandwiches did not include fries, which had to be purchased á la carte, and of course everybody’s going to buy fries to accompany their sandwich, even at $9.50 for a large basket, or $6.50 for a small basket, one of which Tom and I  ordered and shared.

      The food was nonetheless good - my veggies were topped with a very tasty basil pesto– except that the buns were so big that our sandwiches were impossible to eat as sandwiches and the so chewy were these mega-buns that they were difficult to cut with a knife, especially on the surface of the paper-lined baskets they were served in.
       Still, I guess Nepenthe’s credits outweigh its debits, and when we left the restaurant about an hour-and-a-half after we’d arrived there was a pretty sizable crowd waiting around the terrace to be seated. 

     I felt sorry for the waiting children and their parents.
     As for the Nepenthe experience, I felt that it was fine to do once, but I have no need to ever go there again. If I’d had to wait a long time for a seat – especially if I’d ended up with a seat without a view – I wouldn’t have felt that the experience would have been worth the view, especially since there are such lovely views to be gleaned for free from other lovely spots along Big Sur.
      However, the restaurant’s gift shop – which one need not patronize the restaurant to enter – was another story.
     I loved the Nepenthe gift shop. It was full of the neatest, prettiest, stuff.

​…and also had a beautiful outdoor terrace with a view.

     All the neat, pretty stuff was, of course, too expensive to buy – all right, I bought two colorful woven $12 oven mitts as a gift for my daughter – but the place was inspiring to browse.
       In fact it was at the Nepenthe gift shop that I discovered the bedspread environment of my dreams:

…the whole ensemble costing about $1,000.
     I figured I could zip over to Joann Fabrics and for a fraction of that price and buy the material to make reasonable facsimiles of the quilts, skirts, throws and pillows of my Nepenthe Dream Bed.
      Eh, it’ll never happen, of course. But it was nice to dream for a few minutes.
       After lunch we turned and headed back north up California 1, 

...until we arrived at the entrance road (unmarked along the highway but which Tom had found marked on a map) to Pfeiffer Beach,

…at the end of which was a  walking path,

…that led to the most beautifully scenic beach.

     The hills and rock formations reminded me of the setting of a scene from one of my favorite, watch-over-and-over-again movies, “Jason and the Argonauts," when the enraged giant metal god appears from behind a hill on the beach, chases the Argonauts into the sea,

...then wrecks their boat.

     I wondered if that scene was in fact shot in this location, so I looked up the filming info on “Jason and the Argonauts” and learned that the movie was shot in Italy. My thought is that the producer could have save some bucks by filming at Pfeiffer Beah.
       But then, really, what do I know?
       After Pfeiffer Beach we headed back to Monterey, stopping for dinner at a restaurant we found in Pacific Grove called Coco’s,

...which, we later learned, is a California restaurant chain famous for its pies, of which we later partook, though the we found the dinner food really good, too.
​      I ordered the open-faced sirloin smothered in mushrooms and onions with a side wedge of lettuce with bleu cheese dressing, all of which was delicious. The steak was especially good, not always the case with steak – of which there are dozens of ways to ruin it – but this piece was rare as can be and so tender, and the garlic bread atop which it sat was tasty and soft.

​     Tom liked his grilled salmon with vegetables equally well,

…and the hot, fresh bread was so good, soft on the inside, just a little crispy on the outside.

     For dessert we split a slice of the berry pie with ice cream (which, sadly, I forgot to snap), which was also delicious.
    On our way out of the restaurant we chatted for a few minutes with the friendly manager who, we learned, not only enjoyed his job but was a fervent practicing environmentalist,  conservationist, and low-consumptionist.
      We’ve been gifted with such a beautiful, wonderful planet, it’s nice to know that there are some people out there who consciously care about it..

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