This morning Mat rose early, and along with Amy, Pauline and Madonna, headed off to pick up the hire cars. I awoke a little bit later with a burning throat. I tried to speak (although to no one in particular) and found my voice had become incredibly hoarse. Feeling like crap, I decided the best thing was to go to sleep again for another hour.

After I eventually got up, showered and packed, I looked for the room keys so I could hand them in upon checkout. I had one, but couldn’t find the other, even though I’d seen it only minutes before. Knowing then it could only be amongst my stuff (Mat’s bag had been packed since the previous night) I ripped open my bag and immediately unpacked everything. I went through item by item, until the entire bag had been packed again. I started stressing out that I couldn’t find the room key, and searched the entire unit again. I searched my bag, our video camera bag, our day pack, everything. But nothing. Until…

I picked up my handbag, and found the missing card underneath it!

Argh!! So greatly annoyed, yet so greatly relieved, I then grabbed all my stuff ready to head down to Mum’s room. As I walked out the door, Amy rung to say they had the cars and would only be a few minutes away (well, that’s what I heard anyway, turned out she’d said something like fifteen minutes). I rung Mum as well as Aunty Sue to let them know, and we all met outside a few minutes later. We stood just out the front door, in the freezing wind, with our bags. By the time Amy and Pauline arrived, we’d been there for about twenty minutes. At one point though I’d gotten the others to look after my stuff, and raced across to the Walgreens Chemist across the road, and picked up some throat lollies. My head was starting to feel clogged, I was incredibly fatigued, and my throat was on fire. It appeared I’d lost my battle against catching a cold.

The cars they’d hired was a Dodge and a Toyota Rav 4. Amy and Pauline was in the dodge with Fiona and Aunty Sue in the back, with Madonna driving the Rav 4 with Mum, Mat and I as passengers. I was quite disappointed with the cars, since Mat and I had been pining for a “yank tank”, but it was not to be be. There was no point saying anything though, since it was obviously too late to decide on a different car so I packed my luggage into the car and jumped in. Amy programmed our GPS and we were off.

Once we were on the highway I found I still got a kick out of being on the right side of the road. we’d had 4 full days of trying to get used to the traffic not being on the left, but this was the first time we’d physically been in a car driving around. I happily looked at the country side and buildings on the highway, until eventually I fell asleep. I was becoming quite fatigued from my cold.

I awoke a short while later as we were pulling into what’s known as the Apple “motherland” aka the Apple Campus at Cupertino. We all walked into the store to have a look around, where I pointed out the iphones to Mat (he wasn’t impressed) and the ipod speakers (I got a mild “mmm” from him). I continued wandering around until I looked up and realised the rest of the family had gone back to the car. Refusing to go with out buying something I bought a new iphone case and left. Back in the car, we headed off down the highway once more.

I found I could barely stay awake in the car for longer than fifteen/twenty minutes at a time, and again quickly dropped off to sleep. Thinking back, it’s quite lucky the worst two days of my illness were the days we spent a lot of time driving. The extended sleeps in the car no doubt helped my body to rest while my immune system waged the good war. My head hurt, my throat was on fire and I was like a walking zombie, but thankfully my nose was dry.

Our next stop was a massive factory outlet centre. Anything and everything was there, from watches and jewellery, manchester and silverwear, to sporting stores and designer clothing. We agreed to meet back at the cars at a particular time, then all split up. Mat and I immediately headed for the sporting stores, namely Adidas, Nike and Converse. I scored a $5 converse hat, Mat went crazy in the Adidas store and bought about $150 worth of clothing (that would have easily been over $300 in Australia), but nothing in the Nike store impressed us.

We had caught up with Amy and Pauline by this time and we were all starving for lunch. Mat and I hadn’t eaten breakfast, so with Amy and Pauline we all headed over to the In ‘n’ Out burger we’d seen nearby (upon my return to Australia I discovered they apparently have secret menu items that you can order – I wish I had known that beforehand). We got the food to take away, and headed back to the meeting spot for the others. Initally they sooked a little that we had bought food and they didn’t, but they soon got over it once we agreed to share our chips. Then it was back on the highway.

We arrived at Monterey a little after midday. It was a beautiful little seaside town, and we spent about half an hour to an hour just wandering around looking at everything. One of the most amusing places for me was “Candyland” – a great big candy store. Mat and I had fun looking at the labels on the chocolate (he found one called Sugar Daddy, and they also stocked “Sexy Water” – just plain bottled water), then marvelled at the sizes of the chocolate blocks for sale in the counter at the front. Other than the chocolate store we also had a look at some of the small little antique doll stores, but nothing else in the town really caught my eye. The main section with its landscaped gardens was quite beautiful though.

Back on the road, we drove down 17 mile drive, a scenic drive that passes through Pebble Beach. We had been given a brochure with points of interest along the drive along with a little bit of background about each. The points of interest ranged from rock formations and trees, to golf courses (of Pebble Beach Golf Links fame) and equestrian centres.  We stopped off at quite a few for photo opportunites, and were blasted by the freezing winds off the pacific. The colour of the water looked stunning, but it was just too damn cold! I was rather impressed by the family that still attempted to have a picnic regardless, even though they were rugged up with blankets. I half expected Pauline to go and sit down with them, because we all know Pauline likes picnics!

Our next stop was the gorgeous town of Carmel (or Carmel-by-the-sea), though unfortunately we didn’t get to spend a lot of time here; It was getting late in the day and we wanted to reach our accommodation before it got too dark.  We walked around the town doing a bit of window shopping, and I bought dad a t-shirt from one store which funnily enough was the same place Amy had bought Dad’s present the first time she’d visited Carmel (although I didn’t know that until later). We also stopped in at the small bakery for some dinner and a coffee (I got a yummy hot chocolate). If I could pick one of the places in America that I could easily go back to and spent a week it would be Carmel. It was so beautiful, and I can imagine a week or two there would be extremely relaxing. Given the temperature, I’d also be requesting a fireplace too!

From Carmel we made a bee line to Big Sur (although we did stop off at a monastry for my Mum to take photos). It was amazing to see the fog getting thicker and thicker the later in the day got. It meant that we missed a lot of the stunning views of the coast line, but we had another day of driving to do yet so hoped the fog would be gone by the time we left the following day. We were staying at Ripplewood in Big Sur, small wooden cabins spread out amongst the redwoods. Mat and I were in one cabin, with everyone else sharing two cabins. I cheated a little bit in that I’d done my research and knew which cabins were down by the creek. When we had originally booked the cabins while in San Francisco I had immediately grabbed the cabin by the creek, but the others had the benefits of fireplaces.

When we arrived there was a little bit of confusion with the managers there with regards to keys; they didn’t want to give us the keys for the other rooms, but handed them over once they realised we were all in one big group together. With that sorted, we began driving to our cabin so Mum and Madonna could drop Mat and I off before driving back to theirs for the night. It took us a little bit to work out where our cabin was though, as we didn’t see there was another pathway across the road which went to the creek cabins. We finally figured it out, and quickly found the cabin that Mat and I were occuping. It was so small yet so cute, and was cheap too (the cheapest in our entire holiday I believe). The main room was the bedroom/dining room/lounge room, then a small kitchen and separate bathroom. We also had a small balcony out the back where you could sit outside and listen to the creek running just below. After a long day of driving, it was such a welcome sound; complete relaxation.

We bid goodnight to Mum and Madonna, then headed inside. I immediately started boiling a cup of tea, while Mat busied himself videotaping the cabin. He then built a fire in the fireplace out the front, and we sat out there listening to the crackling of the wood and drinking our teas. I was extremely tired by this point, and didn’t want to spend too much time in the cold lest it make my sickness worse, so finished my tea then jumped straight into bed. Mat opened the window a crack so we could hear the stream, then we both passed out for one of the best night’s sleeps I’ve ever had.

For Amy’s version of events you can see her blog post here.

No related posts.