Securing the luggage. The wind was blowing quite strong.
Our destination was Carmel, specifically Pebble Beach. Along the way we stopped in downtown Santa Cruz for an Italian meal at Kianti's Pizza & Pasta Bar. It is home to the 5 time world champion pizza dough spinner. The food was so good! We enjoyed the pepperoni pizza roll and the veggie sandwich with artichokes, sundried tomatoes, feta cheese, olives and pesto. The artichokes were incredibly fresh.
We arrived to Carmel late afternoon and toured the 17-mile drive. This tour is amazing and our hotel, The Inn at Spanish Bay, was on the tour. The 17-Mile Drive is widely recognized as one of the most scenic drives in the world. The famous coastal landmark runs through Pacific Grove to Pebble Beach, from the dramatic Pacific coastline to the majestic Del Monte Forest.
The drive is amazing with gorgeous view of the ocean as you wind through the mountains and trees.
And the views along the shore were beautiful
This is one of our favorite pictures that caputres how breathtaking it was.
After the tour we checked in to our hotel and had a bottle of champagne waiting for us to celebrate our anniversary. The hotel was fabulous! We went down to the terrace for a sunset serenade from a Scottish bag piper at dusk. We enjoyed a glass of wine and then went to Roy's for dinner. It was such a memorable evening for both of us.
We went to bed early that evening to prepare for our golf adventure on the famous Pebble Beach Golf Course in the morning. This round of golf really needs its own blog post. We woke up at 5:00am for a 7:50am tee time. When we arrived to the course, Austin took the shuttle to the driving range to warm up and I explored the Pebble Beach Resort, from the fancy market to all the boutique shops; it was amazing. Amazing probably doesn't begin to describe it. They also had cameras of certain parts of the course, the first tee and the 18th hole that you could view online. It was fun for our family to be able to see us on the course at the beginning and at the end.
We met back up to meet our Caddy for the day, Gene. Pebble is great because the caddys are all old men with great stories to tell you along the way. Now, we've heard the thing to do is walk to course. Austin walked it but insisted I get a cart just in case I didn't want to walk the whole time. Great Idea!
Austin teeing off
Just a flock of geese to distract you, no worries.
The course was gorgeous! I still can't describe how wonderful it was.
We will just round it out to the 18th. I only took 600+ pics of the course...
And some seals to cheer us on the 18th! Final putt!
Getting cleaned up! Nice!
After we finished this amazing round of golf, we had a late lunch in the cafe, that overlooked the first tee. Nothing like a hard days work!
It was such an exciting trip for both of us and I hope we can go back again and play the other courses. Austin did a great job on the course and it was one of our favorite experiences thus far that we will cherish forever!