Saturday, January 10, 2009

Morro Bay

8th of December...yes, I am behind with the blog by, uhhh, a little bit. I am doing my best to get it up to date because as you may know, we are actually in London at the moment.

Anyway, on with the show!

Morro Bay is a beautiful coastal fishing town and very peaceful. It's quite small and it was here we looked into posting gifts back to NZ. We trundled down to our first post office and discovered how much it costs and how to go about sending things back. We also discovered that there is a flat rate package which allows you to send whatever you want at a flat price (AS LONG AS IT FITS IN THE BOX). In the end we decided that we would send things from San Fran as it would likely be easier for us.

After the Post Office, we went down the main streets and checked out a few gift stores and a couple of thrift shops. We purchased a bottle opener from a thrift shop as we had a couple of bottles of wine with corks and everywhere we stayed seemed to lack an opener. Sha has now made this bottle opener an integral part of our travel kit!

After the (very small) 'main drag', we headed down to the
Embarcadero (waterfront wharf/pier) and checked out many of the gift shops and grabbed a bite for lunch. A point of interest on the waterfront is Morro Rock (known by locals simply as 'The Rock') which juts out from the bay. It is very impressive as the photos below show.

Our first view of 'The Rock'


A rather more picturesque view


Sha and a wooden dolphin


View down the
Embarcadero


On our travels we encountered many gift shops of varying quality. The most common was easily replicated ad nauseum, selling the same old stuff, all made in China. Less common were the stores selling unique and local goods or at the very least, stuff made in the US. Our preference was to buy US made goods.

Lunch was clam chowder and a mix of fried seafood (once again, sounds bad but was fresh and tasty). The clam chowder was ace!

Anti drink driving poster at the restaurant we had lunch at

I wonder if a campaign like this would work in NZ?

Lunch

Yes, Sha does have a piƱa colada! I went with the Red Tail Ale

The last place we checked out was The Shell Shop, which was an amazing shop full to the brim with shells of all sizes, shapes and price. While predominantly American shells, there were also quite a few from overseas. This shop is a haven for collectors and arts and craft type people.

After leaving Morro Bay, we headed
up the coast to Monterey.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good to see you back into the blog!! I'm a follower now.. Baaaaaa!

Webclam said...

So what is a lot worse than coal in your stocking? Did you actually see anyone wearing coal in their stockings? Did you try this strange local custom yourselves...?

Foo said...

I don't think coal in anyone's stocking is a good thing.