Carmel-by-the-sea

The day started off clear…..with clear skies and bright sunshine that is…..and my sister asked us to carry along our winter jackets. Even though its cooler here than it is in Mumbai, I did not think it was necessary to carry along my winter jacket. My sister’s predictions turned out to be right. But then, even I wasn’t wrong. A winter jacket was required at carmel on that day, but so was a rain-jacket. It rained that day at carmel !!!
Carmel-by-the-sea is the name of the city where we parked our vehicles. Carmel- by- the- sea also seems to be built on a slope. In some areas roads were just like those in San Francisco, with virtually a 45 degree slope. We parked our vehicles and took out the picnic baskets. The moment we put on our hats, we had to hold onto them….the reason being that it was very windy. When I had my first look at Carmel beach ….it was spectacular. The sands are as white as they can be. It looks as if someone’s put ‘flour’ on the sea shore. Behind and stretching far beyond this white sand was the sea…..bluish green…pure looking. We took off our shoes and walked on the sands and into the water. The water was very cold. My sister told me that its even more colder than it was that day. Near the horizon dark stormy clouds had started appearing. It seemed like there were trails of clouds below the thick upper layer of dark clouds. It was only after some time that I realized that these ‘trails’ of clouds was, in fact, rain which was falling in the faraway sea.We saw flashes of lightning too. I even tried to capture the flashes of lightning in my camera…..but no ones that fast or that lucky!!! We had a fun time taking pictures of each other. There were many people on the beach that day……some enjoying the waters, others playing volleyball and football….while still others were content with just lying down in the sun…tanning themselves. By this time the clouds were very close to the beach and we started wrapping up to leave. Just as we left the beach it started pouring. We took cover under some trees until the rain stopped. After this we ‘hiked’ to a nearby thai restaurant and had tom yum soup, pad thai curry and brown rice. Next we went to chocolate shop where we bought pieces of fudge for everyone. There were also some great looking candy lollipops which my sister wanted to buy for me. I turned down the offer. After all it would look a bit weird for a 20 year old ‘kid’ to eat a lollipop!!! Something to note……there are a lot of art galleries in the city of carmel-by-the-sea. Paintings Galleries, sculpture galleries, regional (folk) handicraft galleries and many more. When you take a walk in the city….there are art galleries….which seem to be everywhere….so this is also a city for the art lovers. We went to Thomas Kinkade galleries. His paintings are lovely. We purchased some of the Thomas Kinkade painting jigsaw puzzles!!! We visited a Chinese Handicraft gallery and many more. After this it was time to leave….so we did.

P.S: Photos of carmel beach will be published later. The computer here is too damn slow.