This jewel of a city boasts world-class artists, galleries, shopping, dining, and entertainment — all within a breathtakingly beautiful, dog-friendly ocean village that is one square mile of heaven.
Ocean Avenue is the heart of Carmel. Lined with boutiques, art galleries, bistros, and cafés, it slopes down to the Pacific and the white sands of leashfree Carmel Beach. A shoppers’ nirvana, Ocean Avenue is home to the French-inspired Carmel Antiques as well as Carmel Plaza, with luxury stores, such as Louis Vuitton, Wilkes Bashford, and Tiffany & Co.
In the center of this open-air, bountifully flowered two-level shopping center is the Fountain of Woof, an example of Carmel’s worship of dogs. (Sunset magazine once named Carmel as the most dog-friendly town in the United States). Bowls of water for thirsty doggies wait outside of boutiques. Even clothiers offer treats to reward a patient companion while his human shops. There is a saying in Carmel that people often know each other’s dogs by name before they know their owners’ names. At The Cheese Shop in Carmel Plaza, locals and tourists stand three-deep and shoulder-to-shoulder to try spectacular wines and cheeses that they can enjoy sitting in the sunshine amid fragrant flowers. Ocean Avenue also hosts part of the Concours de Elegance week in August, when for two days, Concours on the Avenue transforms into mind blowing displays of only the best exotic and classic cars.
Carmel’s reputation as a beautiful destination goes back to its founding by one of the area’s first European settlers, Father Junipero Serra, who chose it as his favorite spot near the ocean to build the Carmel Mission in 1771. The adobe structure stands beside Father Serra’s burial spot and hosts regular Catholic masses.
Carmel formally became an artist' haven in the late 1800s, when a San Jose land developer named Frank Davendorf subdivided the area to create a colony for writers, painters, and poets. The community was bolstered in 1906, when the San Francisco earthquake drove Sinclair Lewis, Mary Austin, Xavier Martinez, Jack London, David Starr Jordan, and other artists to the Monterey Peninsula. A vote in the early 1900s banned home delivery of mail, because the bohemians and artists thought that having numbers on their houses was a sign of uniformity. Instead, residents walked to the post office to pick up their mail, and the tradition continues today. Not only are numberless houses “better for the aesthetic,” most locals appreciate trips to the post office to meet each other and chat as they collect their letters. The aesthetic of Carmel also means no neon signs, food stands, or billboards.
For entertainment, Carmel boasts a professional theater, a symphony orchestra, music festivals, and a cultural center. Pacific Repertory Theater, better known as Pac Rep, has everything from Shakespearean drama to Tony Awardwinning plays, fairy tales, and musicals. The small, intimate Sunset Cultural Center hosts the Carmel Bach Festival, a twoweek long homage to the great composer, drawing Baroque experts and performers from around the world. The Sunset Center also features jazz greats such as Wynton Marsalis, as well as contemporary pop performers like Lyle Lovett, and avant garde performers like Patti Smith.
