Monterey

Monterey needs 1 day: visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium, with its three-story kelp forest tank, and driving the 17-Mile Drive, the private scenic road along cliffs and golf courses facing the Pacific, the same afternoon. June-September brings the most stable weather, though sea fog is common year-round. It's mid-to-upper priced for California. Its bay was designated a national marine sanctuary for the extraordinary biodiversity of its underwater canyon -deeper than the Grand Canyon in some stretches-, and John Steinbeck set his novel Cannery Row in the old sardine cannery district now occupied by the aquarium.