Cannery Row, Monterey, CA

Cannery Row is the waterfront strip in Monterey that John Steinbeck wrote into a 1945 novel, and it is a destination more than a residential street. The sardine canneries that gave the street its name are long gone, and the old buildings now hold restaurants, candy shops and hotels. Only a modest number of condos and apartments sit among them, so Cannery Row has few full-time residents. The Monterey Bay Aquarium anchors the northwest end, in what used to be the Hovden cannery. Close by, Pacific Biological Laboratories at number 800 is the small wooden building where marine biologist Ed Ricketts worked, the model for Steinbeck's Doc. The city bought it in 1993, and the Cannery Row Foundation restored it. The Cannery Row Antique Mall fills a former warehouse with more than a hundred dealers. The aquarium, the lab and the antique mall together can fill a long afternoon on foot. On the water, San Carlos Beach Park at the far end is where dive groups head out over the cannery remains, and McAbee Beach, under a quarter acre, draws kayakers and divers. Steinbeck Plaza and Scholze Park add small public spaces, and the paved Monterey Bay Recreation Trail passes through, so a run along the shore starts at the curb. Tidal Coffee serves a nitro cold brew on a patio and sells bags of beans to take home. For a sit-down dinner, The Sardine Factory has been serving fine seafood here since 1968, and The Fish Hopper offers a more casual take in a former cannery building. There is no full grocery on the strip itself, so supplies mean heading inland into town. Paid parking and tour traffic are part of daily life, and the whole stretch leans toward visitors in summer. Early in the morning, before the doors open, is when Cannery Row feels closest to the place in the book.