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If you’re looking for a day trip from San Francisco, you can do what we did by visiting Carmel By The Sea, Monterey, and Santa Cruz. I’ve been to the first two places before, but some of us didn’t, so we also revisited these places and also visit Santa Cruz. If you haven’t already, you can read by Pacific Coast Highway, Not Really to read about my road trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco a few years ago.

This time, I had more time visiting Carmel and even had a meal there. Santa Cruz I initially wanted to go for the clam chowder, but of course I later realized the restaurant I wanted to go was Barbara’s Fishtrap which was in Half Moon Bay. Still, it was good to visit Santa Cruz and visit its amusement park there.

This post will be written by splitting the sections into the three places. You’ll need to scroll down a bit to find photos for Monterey and Santa Cruz.

Carmel By The Sea

Il Fornaio, an upmarket chain Italian restaurant which I didn’t try Continue reading Day Trip to Carmel By The Sea, Monterey, Santa Cruz

To preface this blog post, technically Jackson is the town while Jackson Hole refers to the entire valley. But to make it easier for everyone to recognize the place, I’ve named the blog post as Jackson Hole, The Affluent Town. In fact, besides our Airbnb, most of the things we’ve visited is around the Jackson Hole Town Square.

Prior to this trip, I didn’t really had any impression about midwest places, probably a bit more cowboy themed and less affluent than cities like Los Angeles. While the cowboy part + wild west themes were quite true (lots of people wearing cowboy hats and plaid shirts), little did I know I would actually enjoy Jackson Hole very much. The town is very clean, polite, more upscale… a lot of my non-US friends complain before that US didn’t have any culture, basically it was just burgers and movies and cities… everything that you can find mainstream globally. But if you really want to experience “American culture” you have to go to Midwest, or at least Jackson Hole because you really do experience the midwest culture here, very different from top cities like LA and NY.

Speaking of difference, having visited Los Angeles and New York and other cities like San Jose and San Francisco, the race population is quite diverse. When I was in Idaho / Montana / Wyoming (Jackson Hole), the population is over 95% white, so it was quite refreshing to go to a town that has a different population group. The obvious question might be asked – did I experience racism (I’m Asian)? To be quite honest, not at all, except for one weird elongated glance from a neighbour when we first moved in our luggage to our airbnb when we first arrived, but other than that never felt it, despite being in a predominantly white area.

Continue reading Jackson Hole, The Affluent Town