Carmel Day 2 - The walking tour

We reached Carmel in  the pitch dark, so we couldn’t see anything. Next morning when I woke up and look through the glass door of the balcony. I could see endless the deep blue ocean covered with gray clouds hovering over the horizon.

Anyway, we wanted to take walking tour around the town, but  we didn’t know from where to start. So, we went to the hotel office, the lady there suggested going to the visitors center, which was in a beautiful mall.

The lady in the visitor center gave us a detailed map, and as well as the list of fairy tale houses. She told that the little town was within one square mile,so better to walk around. Luckily we didn’t take the car with us. We readily planned to go towards the ocean first , then while coming back we would visit the other little places. 

Our hotel was just outside the downtown. The specialty of the town, that most of the building were maintaing their facades. The way they were built early twentieth century still look the same, but inside everything had been changed. Our first stop was the furniture shop.The shop was nothing but another normal furniture shop. However it was actually the dairy farm dated back when it was developing, and it was a little town indeed , rather than tourist destination.

The furniture shop

 Next stop was the drug store, but what was so special? Actually the drug store changed to a different shop, most probably an art gallery, but the original sign was still kept on the wall. When the city decide to take down all the big facade, but they kept the name of the drug store for some unknown reason. 

The town had numerous hidden passages. Those hidden passages were actually lanes and by lanes with the blocks. It is difficult to see those lanes, but you have to search to find those hidden lanes. Some of the lanes would take you through the blocks to the other sides.  The two sides of those lanes had beautiful shops, art galleries, and beautiful other things. One of them was Secret Garden. I would rather write about it in another post.We went most of the lanes. Most of them leads to the other side of the blocks, but some of them leads to the entrance of the some cozy restaurants, even some of them leads to the entrance of private residence. 

Murphy's house

We went to the Murphy’s house, which was built in 1902. Murphy was 19 years old when he built the house. Most of the building in downtown are built by Murphy.

Mr. and Mrs. Murphy

 After visiting the Murphy’s house we felt hungry. After searching we found out one French restaurant named Porta Bella. The food was scrumptious.
After having food, again we started our walking tour. Then we started walking towards to ocean side.Each and very houses on the ocean side were extremely beautiful, and very much unique in their own way. All the houses in carmel had some different ouch, which made them district from other houses in rest of California. On the top of that, unlike other parts of California, Carmel was full of greenery. With beautiful green front yards, the hilly land, the old houses, and could weather gave carmel a fairy tale environment. It was very much like Bibury Village in UK. Anyway, after strolling around the ocean side again we came back to the downtown. I really didn’t know the rout, by which we strolled, I just depended on Mr. Man. 

 One of the building in our list was L’Auberge. L’Auberge was nothing but another beautiful inn. 

However, it had a little history. It was first apartment building in Carmel, which was actually built for artists. Then again we started walking and reached Church of the Wayfayer. It was most probably first built in 1903. On the opposite was Cypress Inn. That in was built in completely Mediterranean style. 

Again we started strolling again. We reached another beautiful mall. My son wanted to go a Christmas shop. Each and every decorations were extremely beautiful but too expensive.
Again we came to the visitor center from where we started our walking tour. Our next destination was fairy tale houses.

   ....to be continued.