The morning after the game, we woke up bright and early to see the sea lions at Pier 39. They are so loud. They lie in great lumpy masses on the jetties and scream like Tusken Raiders. The larger, rotund ones like to sit on their haunches and lift their heads into the air. I thought they were basking in the sun until I saw them doing it in the shade, too, which leads me to believe they’re communicating with some airborne sea lion mothership. After that it was time for some pastries (yum) and some Biscoff lattes (not yum; foul, even) before checking out of the hotel and taking to the road. Goodbye San Francisco. You have been bad for our wallets, but good for our souls.
A two-and-a-half hour drive took us along the west coast towards Monterey Bay. We stopped to buy lunch and I had to stop my younger brother from buying Kool-Aid of a colour I can only describe as ‘nuclear red.’ We were very excited to try Twinkies but discovered that they are maybe too sugary to be all that nice. We pulled into a seaside lay-by to eat our eclectic lunch of turkey wraps, sushi and various types of melon, and to take some pictures of the waves crashing over the rocks. From there it was another hour-and-a-half to Monterey, where we checked into the lovely Portola Hotel and marvelled at the trees in the lobby. We didn’t have much left of the day but we thought it would be nice to take a wander down towards Monterey’s Fisherman’s Wharf (much smaller than San Francisco’s) and see what our options were for dinner. There hasn’t been a huge amount of culture shock since arriving in the States. Most of its cultural differences have become familiar through TV or film. But I was surprised by how almost every single one of the restaurants that lined the pier had a spokesperson out front jostling for our attention. “Come on in, get yourself an entrée and you’ll get a free plate of calamari with your meal”: that sort of thing. It was a Sunday night, so the pier was decently busy, and the whole place was a blizzard of sales-pitching crosstalk. As tourists, we wanted to check out each shopfront and each menu before we decided where to eat, so we ended up rejecting a lot of very nice people, which always makes me feel bad, even when I know they’re trying to sweet talk me into paying $38 for a bowl of mussels. I’ve never experienced this in the UK, where the dining culture seems to encourage letting the restaurant’s prices and vibe speak for itself – either that or the owners can’t be bothered to pay an employee to stand outside all day and shill the menu items. One stringy dude was valiantly trying to promote his bistro’s crab dinner to my dad, and he obviously thought he’d got his hooks in when he asked “So shall we get you a table for five?” only for us to swiftly walk into the restaurant next door. I couldn’t look at the guy. But it was a pleasant relief that the dinner we ended up having was very nice, at a table overlooking the marina with wire sculptures of marine life all over the place. We ate a stupid amount, staggered back to the hotel, played a bit of rummy and then succumbed to the food coma.
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