Start from 39 curated places around Monterey, CA, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Aubergine at L'Auberge Carmel
Chef Justin Cogley's two-Michelin-star tasting room in a nine-table dining room inside the Relais & Châteaux L'Auberge Carmel. The eight-course menu pulls from Monterey Bay's ocean and the surrounding farms. The Carmel pinnacle.
Chez Noir
Michelin-starred husband-and-wife seafood-centric restaurant on Carmel's village streets, sourcing fish directly from Monterey Bay boats. The fine-dining counter-to-the-counter restaurant that doesn't feel formal.
Trails & outdoors
Point Lobos State Natural Reserve
The 'crown jewel' of California state parks, 14 miles of coastal trails through a rocky peninsula of cypress groves, sea-lion coves, and tidepool beaches. The single most-photographed coast on the central California shore.
Monterey Bay Coastal Recreation Trail
An 18-mile paved bike-and-walking path from Castroville south to Pacific Grove, hugging the bay through Cannery Row, the Aquarium, and Lovers Point. The peninsula's flat spine for cycling.
Things to do
Monterey Bay Aquarium
World-class aquarium in a former sardine cannery on Cannery Row, with a million-gallon Open Sea exhibit, sea otters, a 28-foot kelp forest, and the most influential animal-welfare-and-ocean-health program in U.S. aquariums. The single must-do in the city.
Pebble Beach Golf Links
The number-one ranked public golf course in the U.S., on 17-Mile Drive with 18 holes hugging the Pacific. Tee times require resort connection and serious budget, but the public can walk the 18th hole at sunset for free.
Landmarks & sights
Cannery Row
The half-mile strip of former sardine canneries along the Monterey waterfront, immortalized in John Steinbeck's 1945 novel. Now restaurants, hotels, and the world-class Aquarium, but the wooden cannery facades and Steinbeck Plaza monument keep the history visible.
Old Fisherman's Wharf
Working harbor wharf since 1845, now a half-mile of wooden pier crowded with seafood restaurants, whale-watching outfitters, and the city's loudest sea lions. More touristy than Cannery Row, but the boats are real.