USA 2019 - Week 3, San Francisco to Carmel by the Sea

Last night Andrew's iPad got in an unrecoverable boot-loop, but luckily we were in the home of tech and there were two Apple stores within walking distance, one was even on a zero grade street! They concluded it was a hardware issue so they replaced it with a new one. Unfortunately Andrew's first experience with an Apple product has given him a terrible impression of the company... fingers crossed the new one holds up and lives up to expectations!

The Apple store was near a cool place called Maybec's where we got a Manhattan and a Salty Dog before heading back for a Cowgirl Creamery cheese dinner at the Lombard St Motor Inn. 

This morning we had a lazy start before walking to China Town for a dim sum breakfast/brunch at the Great Eastern. I'm glad we didn't get scared off by the mixed reviews (of China Town in general, not this place specifically) because it was top notch service and amazing dim sum! It was the best rice noodle char siu roll we've ever had, and the egg yolk bun was perfect. 

We took a look to see if there was any The Room places to see, but unfortunately a lot of them had either closed or were tricky to find. However we did see one of the sets from Big Trouble in Little China (Ross Alley), which also happens to be the street where the fortune cookie factory is! It smelt amazing, and Andrew bought some fortunes. 

We walked back to the Lombard St Motor Inn via Lombard St again... jesus christ that's a fucking steep hill! At least we earned our food today. 

We took the 1 highway, the scenic route to Carmel by the Sea with a stop off at Monterey, the place where Big Little Lies was filmed. I wanted to go to the Paluca Tratorria (the cafe in the show) which said it was open, and we chose that since the place Andrew wanted to go (Water + Leaves) was closed according to google. But apparently this is the town of big little lies because Paluca was closed, but Water + Leaves was open! (That was Andrew's joke, I stole it). The fisherman's warf was really cute, and the coffee was the best we've had so far.

After an unsuccessful attempt to drive past the Pebble Beach golf club (every street was barricaded off) we arrived at the very sweet Carmel View Valley Inn then made our way straight to Clint Eastwood's restaurant, the Mission Inn, for one of the best meals we've had all trip. The halibut and cauliflower soup were amazing, and the pecan pie and creme brûlée were a perfect finisher. The walk home was kind of creepy since the streets don't have side walks or street lamps, but we are in the richest neighbourhood we have ever been in our lives so we felt completely safe.

We're about to have an early night to prepare for our longest drive (8h) to Los Angeles tomorrow.