Muir Woods

Today (Wednesday 15th August) we woke up early, ate our continental breakfast of blueberry muffins and coffee (tea for Em), and checked out our hotel. This involved a half hour wait for the valet parking to bring our car.

Once on the road we headed straight to Muir woods. This involved the drive over the Golden Gate bridge - we were in awe. Such an amazing bridge and what an engineering achievement considering when it was built. Each of the steel cables is about 924mm thick and comprises about 27000 individual steel cables!  Some feat.

Muir woods houses some of the oldest and tallest trees of their kind in the world. Most of it is Douglas fir and red cedar I think.  The sheer canopy height blows you away. No photo I've seen can do it justice - you have to see it for yourself.  When your under the canopy you feel a world away from San Fran. It's quiet, but not only that - it feels peaceful, serene and relaxing. While you wander through, the heavy scent of pine is pungent and the shaded scene has rays of light piercing it where the canopy breaks occur.  

A fresh lunch later (had at Muir woods), we hit the road again, headed for Salinas - about 3 hours drive from San Fran.  

When we arrived at Salinas we discovered it to be a bit of a middle of nowhere town (apologies to any residents who know the true Salinas). There seemed to be nothing there really. However it was the home of John Steinbeck, so there must be something there that's inspirational at least. Our motel was near an industrial plant with a busy road, but we knew this when we booked, and it didn't bother us.  

We lounged by the pool for about half an hour and steamed in the melting hot Jacuzzi whilst scouring trip advisor for the filet mignon of restaurants here.  Up trumps came a local sushi place, only a mile walk - perfect so we could both let our hair down and have a drink or two...

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The sushi at this restaurant Kokoro - out of this world. There were four pages of special sushi rolls and the selection was incredible. The quality and variety combined was the best we've ever had.  Totally amazing. And, the value for money was yet again, amazing. The whole meal came to $50 + tip. I only hope they don't increase their prices massively in the future and become as unreasonable as Yo!

We left there very much sated and walked back to the motel to hit the hay. A good day.