Seaside, CA

Seaside is the practical, lived-in city on the bay side of the Monterey Peninsula, a few minutes from Monterey by car and sharing borders with Marina and Sand City. Highway 1 is the quick way in, and behind it the streets climb gradually toward ground that belonged to Fort Ord until the base closed. Houseberry divides the city into five neighborhoods. Downtown Seaside is the tight commercial strip along Broadway Avenue. Laguna Grande wraps around a lake and its regional park. Del Monte Heights is the big residential grid east of downtown, Ord Grove follows Fremont Boulevard toward Marina, and Seaside Highlands takes in the planned streets, fairways and university campus on old base land. Older blocks are mostly one-story houses from the 1940s and 1950s, with apartment complexes along the main roads. The newer streets past General Jim Moore Boulevard are association-managed, and some of them look out toward the ocean. For time outside, Fort Ord Dunes State Park sits just up the coast, nearly a thousand acres with four miles of beach, and the 18-mile Monterey Bay Coastal Recreation Trail starts in Castroville and runs through the area. Fort Ord National Monument, with its hiking and riding routes, starts at the city's eastern edge, and Cutino Park handles skate-park and ball-field duty inland. Breakfast at The Breakfast Club on Fremont Boulevard is a local habit. Other Brother Beer Co. Pours on Broadway, Acme Coffee Roasting Co. Roasts its beans in an alley off Palm Avenue, and German Restaurant Stammtisch on Echo Avenue opens only for some evenings. Nearly everything involves a car. Fremont and Del Monte Boulevards hold most of the errands, and Highway 1 puts Monterey's larger stores and restaurants minutes away. The city comes in separate pieces with open base land between them, so a trip across town is a drive more often than a stroll, and the shoreline sits on the far side of the highway from most homes. In exchange, a single afternoon can hold a golf round, a beach ride and a bowl of noodles without leaving town.