The exclusive enclave of Carmel-by-the-Sea (to give its complete name) began life in the early years of the 20th century as a small but lively bohemian colony inhabited by the literary likes of Sinclair Lewis, Mary Austin, and Upton Sinclair. However, with a few arts-and-craftsy exceptions, by the 1950s Carmel had turned into the archly conservative and contrivedly quaint community it is today—a place where Marie Antoinette would no doubt feel at home, dressing down as a peasant, albeit in Chaps by Ralph Lauren. Preserving its rural feel by banning street addresses (and skateboards and home mail delivery . . .), Carmel simultaneously loves and abhors the many thousands of tourists who descend on it every weekend to window-shop its many designer boutiques and galleries that fill the few blocks off Ocean Avenue, the main drag through town. Though most of Carmel’s many art galleries seem directed at interior decorators, a few are worth searching out, including the Photography West Gallery on the southeast corner of Dolores and Ocean Streets, and the Weston Gallery on Sixth Avenue near Dolores Street, featuring the works of Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and other Carmel-based photographers.
Though it’s easy to be put off by the surface glitz, Carmel does have a lot going for it. The water is too cold and treacherous for swimming, but broad City Beach at the foot of Ocean Avenue gleams white against a truly azure cove. To the south, aptly named Scenic Drive winds along the rocky coast, past poet Robinson Jeffers’s dramatic Tor House (tours Fri. and Sat. 10 am–3 pm; $7; 831/624-1840). Jeffers, who lived here between 1914 and 1962, built much of what you see here out of boulders he hauled up by hand from the beach.
At the south end of the Carmel peninsula, another broad beach spreads at the mouth of the Carmel River; this usually unpopulated spot, part of Carmel River State Park, is also a favorite spot for scuba divers exploring the deep undersea canyon.
Above the beach, just west of Hwy-1 a mile south of central Carmel, Carmel Mission (daily; donations) was the most important of all the California missions, serving as home, headquarters, and final resting place of Father Junipero Serra, the Franciscan priest who established Carmel and many of the 20 other California missions, and who is entombed under the chapel floor. The gardens—where on weekends wedding parties alight from limos to take family photos—are beautiful, as is the facade with its photogenic bell tower; this is the mission to visit if you visit only one.
