Monterey

When we visited Big Sur, we actually stayed in Monterey. We did that because there aren't many places to stay in Big Sur, they are expensive, and they were full anyway. So the Holiday Inn Express it was for us.

Monterey is a fairly touristy kind of place, it has an aquarium, and other things, and the main street for that sort of stuff is called Cannery Row. It's one of these places that used to be full of industrial stuff, and now has been transformed into something that attracts crowds - presumable going through a difficult period in between. I suggested that, given that lots of people went to Monterey for the sake of going to Monterey, we might go and look at it. Susanne said that we were members of the Long Beach Aquarium, and it wasn't like it was in the book anyway, and so there was little point.

One of the many lovable things about Susanne is that she assumes that if she knows something, I must know it too (or almost all of it). For example, I was supposed to know about 'the book', but obviously didn't know quite enough to know that it wasn't like the book.

I enquired further. "The Book" is called Cannery Row, and is by John Steinbeck. It describes the life of Cannery Row (which used to be called Ocean View Drive) where sardines were canned (surprise there) and pressed to make sardine oil, and the workers were largely Asian.

Why we would want to go there if it still was the place where sweating workers processed sardines into cans, I'll never know. But if they weren't there, squeezing sardines, it wasn't worth looking at, apparently.

Look! Cannery Row is on Google Books.