Morning
Land at SFO
San Francisco International. BART runs from the airport station to Powell Street downtown in about 30 minutes — leave the rental car until day three, because a car in San Francisco is a parking bill and nothing else.
Afternoon / Day
Check in: Hotel Nikko
Union Square, two blocks from the Powell Street BART and about three from the cable car turntable. Parking is valet only, which is worth knowing for the day the car arrives.
Lunch at Swan Oyster Depot
A marble counter with about eighteen stools, run by the same family since 1912. Cash only, no tables, no reservations, and it shuts mid-afternoon — come straight here from check-in, because the line is long by midday and a solo traveler still gets seated faster than anyone.
Ferry Building Marketplace
The 1898 clock tower on the Embarcadero, gutted and rebuilt as a food hall that trades all day. The Saturday farmers market outside is the bigger draw but it winds up in the early afternoon, so treat it as a bonus if lunch has run long, and walk the waterfront north toward Pier 7 afterwards for the skyline view back.
Evening
Dinner at House of Prime Rib
One dish, served since 1949, carved off a silver cart at the table. Sit at the bar if you are eating alone — it is the friendliest room in the city.
Morning
Breakfast at Mama's on Washington Square
A North Beach corner cafe with a queue down the block and no way to skip it. Order the French toast and eat it looking at Saints Peter and Paul church.
Walk the Golden Gate Bridge
Start at the Welcome Center on the San Francisco side and walk out to the first tower and back — about 40 minutes. The east sidewalk is the pedestrian side; fog usually burns off by late morning.
Afternoon / Day
Lands End Trail and Sutro Baths
A cliff path through cypress out to the ruins of a Victorian swimming palace, with the bridge over your shoulder the whole way. Start from the Lands End Lookout and allow ninety minutes.
Lunch at Outerlands
Driftwood-walled room four blocks from Ocean Beach, in the foggiest neighborhood in the city. Bread baked in house; the open-faced sandwiches are the thing. Sunday brunch takes no reservations and finishes early in the afternoon, so if Mama's and the bridge have eaten the morning, cut Lands End rather than lunch.
Evening
Dinner at Zuni Cafe
A wedge-shaped room on Market Street that has been doing the same wood-oven roast chicken and bread salad since 1979. It is built for two but the counter takes one.
Morning
Pick up the car, Highway 1 to Half Moon Bay
Collect the rental downtown and head south on CA-1 through Pacifica and the Devil's Slide tunnels. About 30 miles and an hour, and the coast starts immediately. This is Labor Day, and downtown branches often keep holiday hours or stay shut — confirm yours is trading, or switch the booking to an airport counter, which will not be.
Afternoon / Day
Lunch at Sam's Chowder House
A deck over the water on the north edge of Half Moon Bay. Clam chowder and a hot buttered lobster roll; grey whales pass offshore in season.
Highway 1 on to Santa Cruz
Fifty miles of two-lane coast, roughly an hour and fifteen. Pigeon Point Light Station and the Ano Nuevo elephant seal reserve are both signposted pullouts along the way.
Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk
California's oldest surviving amusement park, on the sand since 1907. The 1924 Giant Dipper is a wooden coaster and a National Historic Landmark; ride it once, then walk out on the wharf. Labor Day is the busiest driving day of the year on this corridor, so add an hour across the day and expect to circle for parking.
Evening
Around the bay to Monterey
CA-1 curves inland around the farm flats of Watsonville and Castroville — 43 miles, about 50 minutes. Artichoke fields, not ocean, for most of it.
Check in: Monterey Bay Inn
On Cannery Row at the quiet end, a short walk from the aquarium and the recreation trail. Sea lions bark on the rocks below all night.
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Morning
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Built into a former sardine cannery and still the best aquarium in the country for what it shows: a three-storey kelp forest fed by open bay water, plus sea otters. Go at opening, allow two hours.
17-Mile Drive to Carmel
A private toll road through Pebble Beach; pay at the Pacific Grove gate and exit at the Carmel gate. Seventeen miles that take an hour with stops at Bird Rock, Spanish Bay and the Lone Cypress.
Afternoon / Day
Carmel-by-the-Sea on foot
A one-square-mile village of cottages and courtyards that has never had street numbers or mail delivery. Walk Ocean Avenue down to the beach, then loop back through the lanes off Dolores and San Carlos.
Lunch at Dametra Cafe
A small Mediterranean room on Ocean Avenue where the staff put down the plates and pick up instruments halfway through service. Open daily, walk-ins take the counter, and it is two minutes from the car.
Point Lobos State Natural Reserve
Headlands of white granite and Monterey cypress where the bay meets the open ocean; harbor seals haul out in China Cove. Four miles south of Carmel, and the Cypress Grove loop is under a mile and is the one to do.
Highway 1 south past Garrapata
Nine miles and about twenty minutes of cliff-edge two-lane from Point Lobos to Bixby Creek. Garrapata State Park has no sign and no car park — it is a run of numbered turnouts on the ocean side, and the bluff trail from turnout 13 is worth one of them.
Bixby Creek Bridge and Point Sur
The most photographed span on the coast, best seen from the pullout on the north approach or from Castle Rock viewpoint above it. Point Sur is six miles further on, a lighthouse on a volcanic rock that can only be reached on a guided walk — the view of it from the highway is the point.
Evening
Back north to Monterey
Turn around at Point Sur and retrace 25 miles, about fifty minutes. Driving north puts you on the inland lane, which is easier on the nerves and worse for the view — the pullouts are all on the ocean side.
Morning
CA-68 to Salinas, then US-101 south
Leave at first light and take CA-68 across to Salinas, 18 miles and about half an hour, then turn south on US-101. The Big Sur coast run down Highway 1 is the alternative to all of this, but that stretch is subject to closure — check Caltrans before you commit to it, and note that Gorda and Lucia are the only fuel on it and the signal is thin the whole way.
Down the Salinas Valley to Paso Robles
A hundred and five miles of open four-lane through Soledad, King City and San Ardo, about an hour and three-quarters. Lettuce fields give way to oil pumps and then to vines; Paso Robles is the natural break, and the downtown square has shade and coffee.
CA-46 West over the Santa Lucias
Twenty-five miles and about forty minutes, climbing west out of the vineyards and dropping through grassland to meet Highway 1 at Cambria. This is where the trip gets its ocean back.
Afternoon / Day
North up Highway 1 to San Simeon
Fourteen miles and twenty minutes back up the coast past Moonstone Beach and the Hearst Castle turning. It is an out-and-back off the day's line, and it is the reason to come this way at all.
Piedras Blancas elephant seals
A boardwalk on the ocean side of Highway 1 a few miles north of San Simeon, above a beach northern elephant seals use through most of the year. Early September is the quiet end of that cycle — juveniles and a scattering of adults, not the packed sand of the winter breeding season or the spring moult. Fifteen minutes, no ticket, no trail; Hearst Castle is signposted just south if you want the two-hour version instead.
South to Morro Bay
Forty-three miles and about an hour, retracing through Cambria and on down the flat coast shelf through Cayucos.
Lunch on the Morro Bay Embarcadero
Fish counters and chowder windows along the waterfront, under a 576-foot volcanic plug sitting in the harbour mouth. Walk out toward Morro Rock afterwards to stretch before the freeway.
US-101 south to Los Angeles
Thirteen miles inland to San Luis Obispo, where Highway 1 merges into US-101 and the trip changes character: 210 freeway miles through Santa Maria and Santa Barbara, three and a half to four hours. Add an hour if you reach the basin in the evening rush.
Evening
Check in: Hotel Erwin, Venice
A block off the Venice boardwalk with a rooftop bar facing the water. Venice itself is walkable from here, but keep the car — tomorrow is spread across the basin, and the Getty and Griffith are a drive apart.
Morning
Breakfast at Gjusta
A bakery and deli counter in a converted Venice warehouse. Order at the case, take a number, sit in the yard.
Venice Boardwalk and the canals
Walk the Ocean Front Walk south past Muscle Beach and the skate park, then cut inland to the canals — the surviving stretch of Abbot Kinney's 1905 attempt to build Venice in California.
Afternoon / Day
The Getty Center
Richard Meier's travertine campus on a ridge above the 405, reached by its own cable-hauled tram. Galleries are going dark in phases ahead of the renovation, so check what is actually hanging before you go — the Central Garden and the view from downtown to the ocean are half the point anyway.
Lunch at the Original Farmers Market
Open-air stalls under a clock tower at Third and Fairfax, trading since 1934. LACMA and the Urban Light lamppost installation are a ten-minute walk south on Wilshire if you want an afternoon museum.
Evening
Griffith Observatory at sunset
A 1935 art deco observatory on the south slope of Mount Hollywood, with the Los Angeles basin laid out below and the Hollywood sign on the ridge behind. Parking fills early; the DASH bus from Vermont/Sunset avoids it.
Morning
Out of LA to Huntington Beach
There is no scenic way out of Los Angeles: take the 405 and the 710 down to Long Beach, then pick PCH back up along the water. Forty-five miles, an hour and a quarter if the freeways are moving and closer to two if they are not.
Huntington Beach Pier
A concrete pier running 1,850 feet into the Pacific at the foot of Main Street, with surfers working the break on both sides of it. Walk to the end, watch a few sets, carry on.
Afternoon / Day
PCH through Newport to Laguna
Eighteen slow miles of stoplights and beach towns, about 40 minutes, past Newport Beach and Crystal Cove State Park.
Lunch at Las Brisas, Laguna Beach
A clifftop terrace above Main Beach on the site of the old Victor Hugo Inn, doing coastal Mexican food. Walk the Heisler Park bluff path afterwards for the tidepools below.
Evening
I-5 south to San Diego
Eighty miles past San Onofre and the long empty coast of Camp Pendleton. Budget two hours rather than ninety minutes — this is I-5 through Pendleton on a Friday evening, and it does not flow. Old Highway 101 through Encinitas and Del Mar is the prettier parallel and costs you another 40 minutes. Check in at the Pacific Terrace on arrival.
San Diego, Then Home
Morning
Breakfast at Kono's Cafe
A counter at the foot of Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach where the queue is out the door by nine. Breakfast burritos, paper plates, ocean across the road.
La Jolla Cove
A small sandstone cove ten minutes up the coast, loud with sea lions. Five minutes south on Coast Boulevard, harbour seals have taken over the separate beach at Children's Pool; the Coast Walk Trail runs north from the cove to the caves.
Afternoon / Day
Lunch at Las Cuatro Milpas
A Barrio Logan kitchen that has been making tortillas by hand since 1933. The line forms outside, the menu is short, and it is the oldest thing you will eat on this trip.
Balboa Park
Twelve hundred acres of Spanish Colonial Revival buildings left over from the 1915 exposition, holding seventeen museums and the zoo. If you only do one thing, walk El Prado end to end and sit in the Botanical Building.
Evening
Return the rental car
One-way drop at the consolidated rental centre near the airport; a shuttle runs from there to the terminals. Fill the tank out on Rosecrans before you get close; there is nothing convenient once you are in the airport loop.
Fly home from SAN
San Diego International sits three miles from downtown with a single runway and approach straight over the city — the shortest transfer of the whole trip, and roughly 700 road miles behind you since San Francisco.
