Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Trip Report Monterey Weekend

My husband and I went to Monterey for the weekend to celebrate our anniversary. For this trip, our focus was on Monterey history and the downtown area.

Activities:

Saturday was our sightseeing day and we started our tour of historic Monterey at the Pacific House at the Monterey historical park near the wharf. They have a visitor’s center there and an interpretative exhibit of Monterey history. We picked up a map for a self-guided history walk and set out. There is also a guided tour, but it was earlier in the day. The route takes you past historical buildings – mostly from Spanish, Mexican, and early American Monterey history. There are several adobes that can be toured, mostly with short guided tours – all of which are free. A few are open for self tours. The schedule of tours is available online and on a flyer at most of the adobes. We toured the Larkin House, which was neat. We also went into the Customs House and the Casa del Oro. There are also several gardens – most attached to the adobes – that are open to the public in the afternoons, so we wandered around several of those.

After the history walk, we went over to the wharf (the walk begins and ends near there) for some chowder and to watch the boats and view the wildlife. There were lots of people out and about, so the people watching was good too.

It was a really nice, low key day of sightseeing and quite educational too – sort of a refresher course for me, but a lot of new stuff for my husband.

Hotel:

Portola Hotel and Spa, which is between downtown and the wharf area, so very convenient location for what we wanted to do. We parked the car when we arrived and didn’t take it out again until we checked out of the hotel. In the mean time, we walked everywhere we wanted to go. The hotel itself is great – very comfortable, beautiful lobby, and nice staff. We even had a partial view of the wharf from our room. The hotel consists of the main building and then a secondary building across a pedestrian walkway - the pool and spa are in the secondary building, so for convinience, anybody planning to use the pool or spa a lot might want to request a room in that buildng instead of the main building.

I reserved the room through Expedia and got a rate of $145/night. The rate on the hotel web site for the same room type was around $225/night. Parking is $15/day in the garage next to the hotel.

We didn’t eat at the restaurant in the hotel, but we did have a few drinks at Peter B.’s, which is a microbrewery and sports bar at the hotel. The beer was very good and the atmosphere was friendly – the kind of place where the regulars have their own mugs with their names on them.

Eats:

Ambrosia Indian Bistro – 565 Abrego St for dinner Friday night. This restaurant was really great – such a find. It is downtown, but on a quiet block a couple streets removed from Alvarado. They have a nice candle-lit atmosphere inside and a really great patio in front with lots of plants and a fountain. The menu is pretty extensive, both meat and vegetarian choices. The wine list is pretty good too, with lots of local wines. We had chili prawn tandori, chicken chetandam (I think that is the name), palak paneer, basmati rice, and butter naan – everything was incredibly good. Dinner was $95 for 2 people, stuffed to the gills, plus a bottle of wine, including tax and tip – not inexpensive, but if we wouldn’t have had the bottle of wine, it would have been quite reasonable. They also have a buffet at lunch time.

Rosine’s – 434 Alvarado Street for breakfast Saturday morning. We really enjoyed this restaurant. It is a family-style coffee shop with friendly service and good food. I had waffles with fresh strawberries and was in heaven. The restaurant has big open windows in the front which make for good people watching. The coffee was pretty good for a family-style coffeeshop. Breakfast was about $35 for 2 including tax and tip.

Old Fisherman’s Grotto – Fisherman’s Wharf for a late lunch. This has been our go-to wharf restaurant for chowder on the wharf for a long time – however that may have changed. We didn’t have a bad experience, but the chowder was just not up to snuff – overly salty, not many clams. Also, I think they have raised their prices. We were surprised when two bowls of chowder, 2 bottles of beer, and an order of garlic bread came to $40 – I don’t remember their prices being that high.

Santa Lucia Café and Market – 484 Washington Street – for dinner Saturday night. This is an Italian and German restaurant downtown – we went for the German part. The restaurant décor is definitely German – feels like a small beer hall, very cozy. Good selection of German beers on tap, several German wines on the menu as well. I had a Franzikaner Hefe-Weisen and my husband had a couple Koestritzer schwartzbiers. We had schnitzel with red cabbage and potatoes and then apple strudel with ice cream for dessert. All very good. Business was slow and we were the last to leave at about 10 – they stay open later if there are customers, but we thought we should let them go home since we were the only ones left.

Plumes Coffee House – 400 Alvarado Street for breakfast Sunday morning. This is a small corner coffeehouse with really nice people. However the coffee was just ok and the muffins were dry. So we would choose a different place next time. There are several little coffeehouse type places on Alvarado to pick from.

Phil’s Fish Market – Moss Landing. We stopped there on the way home for some chowder – needed to make up for the less-than-stellar chowder from the day before. As usual, Phil did not disappoint us.