Monterey

The Monterey Peninsula has long literary associations. The was a bohemian colony at Carmel in 1906 with George Sterling, Jack London, Mary Austin and Sinclair Lewis. Robert Louis Stevenson visited in 1879. Henry Miller wrote "Tropic of Capricorn" just down the Big Sur Coast and then there was John Steinbeck. Mainly he lived a little inland at Salinas but in writing about Monterey in Cannery Row  he refounded an identity for the town. In WW2 Monterey was the sardine canning capital of the world processing 200,000tonnes pa. the stocks shrank due to over-fishing and the industry was already dying before the novel was even published. In the 1970s the town re-named the row of derelict factories "Cannery Row" after the book and they were redeveloped as expensive restaurants, and shopping a la Albert Dock.....with a suitable tribute to Steinbeck.

The town itself has a nice marina and some old buildings dating back to when it was part of Mexico. There was one 30s bank building I particularly liked.