Wednesday 4th February 2015- a double helping of Whole Foods

We had accidentally run out of milk which meant no cereal in the room for breakfast and as we don’t want to pay hotel prices for breakfast a quick check on the internet showed a Whole Foods Store only tem minutes away, great!

Ten minutes later we were croissant and Danish pastry and coffee for breakfast and sat outside in the sun to enjoy it and at the same time a guy had brought his young grey parrot on his bike for a coffee. We also bought some sandwiches for lunch as they would be cheaper here than Carmel. It was at this point I realised I had not picked up the camera for today’s trip down to Carmel, blast it. Anyway we did not want to go back to the Hotel and as we have visited Carmel some years ago the photos of the place won’t have changed much.

Monterey and Carmel are almost side by side with Carmel being considerably more expensive at prices a bit like Weybridge. However there is a considerable difference in the town with its quaint shops and coffee bars and many shops selling tourist stuff and yes, even a large Christmas Decoration store which was chock a block with stuff at this time of the year. We stopped for an iced coffee then continued walking for a while until about 12.30 and then back down the car park by the sea where we have left the car.

The car is a black Chevrolet Malibu and seems well equipped for a hire car and when fiddling with the knobs, bearing in mind the handbook has about 250 pages plus other books on the infotainment system, and discovered that car had automatic tyre pressure notification and that one tyre was down by about 10psi. Umm better get that fixed. To be frank the car is quite dirty and clearly had not been cleaned before release. As the car was in a dark car park we could not see at time of collection very much, oh well.

However, its lunchtime and we can sort out the tyres later and so following lunch overlooking the sea and sitting in the sun we asked the SatNav to find us a garage which it did and ten minutes later we were blowing up the offending tyre we thought. When rechecking the metre it would appear that they have swapped the tyres around and not updated the control centre and so here I was blowing up the wrong tyre. I asked the mechanic at the garage for advice and he said the system should have been reset? However the tyre pressures no seem to be OK.

The back to the Hotel for Jen to have a rest and take some of the pills we bought at the pharmacy and Noel to look at hotels and routes over the next few days. Our Hotel for Thursday night is booked in a place called Arroyo Grande which down and beyond the Hearst castle.

So after looking at maps and at places we have not visited before we will do and overnight stop in a place called Barstow Ca and then we can have a relaxed drive though the Mojave National Park en-route to Lake Havasu City which is the home of the OLD LONDON BRIDGE. Noel is using up some of his Hilton points for the next two nights but in Lake Havasu it was not the best and so we have resorted to Hotwire again and have now booked at the Lake Havasu Dunes Hotel for a condo with full kitchen and right by a lake and with swimming pools etc, sound great.

Tonight for dinner we went back to Whole Foods and there is a big choice but we both decided to have the Classic Burger and fries which was what a burger and fries should taste of, none of the McDonald's

 and Burger king rubbish for us. We looked out for a car wash on the way back to the Hotel but unfortunately the hand car washes were closed so perhaps tomorrow we can find somewhere.

Let’s hope Jennifer is feeling better tomorrow as the cold does seem to be clearing.

PS- Photos courtesy of the web