Carmel & Monterey - Pebble Beach

We arrived in Carmel having had a great drive down Highway 1 from SF with some fantastic scenery along the coast. And quite treacherous roads yet again. We stayed at Carmel Highlands Inn, which Sheena & I had stayed at 15 years ago - it was not the same as we remembered inevitably - a great location hanging off the edge of the rocks overlooking the ocean - but a bit quirky hotel - and not really set up for kids. More for couples! but Carmel and Big Sur were lovely (Carmel used to have Clint Eastwood as Mayor) and the beaches and walks along the coast were really lovely - and surprisingly sea misty in the mroning until around 11am until the sun burnt off the mist and won through! We chilled out, walked along the coast, used the gym and swam.

We then moved on (North rather than South so that Ian could play Golf!) for 2 days at Pebble Beach in the scenic 17-mile drive in Monterrey. An amzing golf paradise with 6 fabulous golf courses - most in the top 50 USA golf courses and one (very) private one at number 2 worldwide called Cypress Point - where you have to play with a memebr who are few and far between - needless to say I did not know the right people and so could only play the 2nd and 3rd best of the courses. The first day I played Pebble beach with Alan and Gregg (whose birthday it was!) - as many of you know I was expecting Tiger Woods and Clint Eastwood to play round with me but sadly Gregg and Alan turned up - Alan took 6 practice shots after studying every shot with his range finder - so it was a very long round. PB was a beautiful course, and thanks to Garrett, my caddy, I played OK after not playing for 3 months and played with rented clubs & shoes! I scored 29 points and so was pretty happy with that. I drove pretty well and hit most fairways at 270 yds, hit most of the par 3 greens but few of the par 4 greens in 2 - which is the next part of my game that needs to improve to get down to below 10 handicap.

The next day Garrett persuaded me to play Spyglass Hill - a harder course than PB by around 7 shots apparently - but it was a really, really good course that I would put ahead of PB in all manner of ways. The sun came out and I played pretty well with few missed shots and i got 34 points - 15 on the way out and 19 on the way back including 2 birdies and a few pars. I felt my golf was back to its normal and now i am not going to play for 3 more months again!! It was a really luxurious place to stay at Pebble Beach and lovely for me to play some golf at this golf mecca. I would love to come back on tour with some golf mates and hope that I will be able to do that sometime in the future - it would be a real treat and i will start saving up now!!

The kids had a great time swimming in the pool and chilling out - finishing their homework before moving onto LA, where we would have too busy a time to do any school work.

We all really enjoyed staying at Pebble Beach and wished we had stayed for more time - we really enjoyed the food and after dinner PB had huge outdoor fires and seating around it and we all met some really friendly Americans drinking after dinner drinks, sitting around the fire and chatting. We met a local doctor from the forces and a pilot from Iraq and chatted about the Obama changes that are happening in the country. All very interesting and yet again we found the Americans to be really friendly, polite and so helpful - we have not yet met a rude American in America - maybe the only rude ones leave America!!