All posts tagged: Highway 1

The Highway 1 in my Head

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It’s funny how memory works, or doesn’t work, in some cases. On non-working holidays like this, for instance, when I have to write a throwback travel piece about that California road trip we did in 2009, I beat my brains for details to make up even a half-coherent story, and my memory fails me. Where did we stay? What was that park? How many days, exactly, were we on the road? How many miles was it? Why did I take that picture—was that tunnel important? The drive along the famous Pacific Coast Highway, or California State Road 1, was a spur-of-the-moment decision—this much I’m sure of. My roommate, a Filipino nurse in San Francisco, learned that he would not be on duty the first few days of the year, my then-fiancé could take a day off, and my cousin, a teaching assistant, wouldn’t have class till the following week. I, well, I was soon headed back to Hong Kong—my home base then—and was looking for an awesome trip to end my six months in the …

Carmel Dream

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There are few things in this world that support our belief in the fairy tales we loved when we were little. I used to secretly dream of being in faraway castles and magical towns and royal balls and gingerbread houses — happy things that reality slowly but surely clawed out of my heart. Growing up is sad like that. Today, a rather pensive Sunday, my thoughts go back to another day in January, many years ago, when I first set foot on Carmel-by-the-Sea. It was one of the stops in our hastily planned New Year (2009) drive along the famous Highway 1 in California — just me, my then-fiance now-hubby, my cousin, and a roommate in San Francisco. It was in Carmel that I found the stuff of fairy tales again. Sadly, we didn’t get to see the inside of those quaint cottages, and this picture here is the only decent one I got of the 300-year-old San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo Mission. But I remember how everything was achingly pretty. I would give anything to go back there.  #adreamisawishyourheartmakes