Well drove south from san fran, highway one, coastline , lots of bays and silver sands, passed harvest of the advocados and lettuce fields for miles.............monterey wharf looked similar to fishermans warfe and the cannery, all too comercialised for me.........so off to Asilomar State Beach where we were booked for 2 nights.............. it was built in 1913 as a YWCA, its a series of lodges which contained about 6 huge bedrooms ( ha weve gone from tiny to huge !), each lodge has a living room with big log fire..................... the lodges are around a big lodge building which is quite stunning , all are wood and stone and are deemed to follow the arts and craft movement of the time to blend with nature, all the furniture is arts and craft and in abundance.

Its a strange old place though as it is not only a hotel of sorts, but not like a real hotel as such and also attracts groups of people on seminars which seem mainly to be the " body and soul " type of seminars............i looked on the board and they are all a bit spiritual...................tom said there seemed to be a lot of mia farrow look alikes floating / wandering around with a glazed calmness ................theres one group that arent talking,they arent deaf, but are on a non talking "find oneself" retreat.............

theres a broadwalk down to the beach thru the park , the sea a few mins away, and weve seen deers and baby deer outside our window. in fact when we got lost looking for this place we came across a deer in the residential street we found ourselves lost in ! Its the rutting season and he was a proud youngster that wasnt going to move for us !...............

our hotel rate includes breakfast which is in the great hall, we walked in and i thought oh whats all this ............lots of big round tables , masses of folk and we were guided to our table which was normal hotel guest and not " retreaters"! breaky was cooked and huge with everything you could think of............

we got out early as it was going to be hot today and we picked up the audio tour with headphones to wander around the grounds and then the dunes and beach, it was really informative .............. this afternoon weve sat by the pool.....................one thing i do miss is my cup of tea, wish id brought my travel kettle !
we leave here tomorrow to go down the 17 mile coast drive which is a toll road and apparently jaw dropping coastline to see and then the BIG SUR..............and on to San Simeon by the sea for three nights.................