Santa Lucia Village, Salinas, CA

Santa Lucia Village in Salinas is known to outsiders for something that has little to do with houses. Up a hillside on Old Stage Road, the Drummond Culinary Academy at Rancho Cielo opens its dining room to the public on Friday evenings. Culinary students run the kitchen and the floor, and diners eat indoors by big windows or outside on a patio above the valley. Seats go by reservation, which makes it more of an occasion than a habit. Down on the flat, daily life runs along North Main Street. El Gabilan Library, at 1400 North Main, replaced a much smaller branch and has a community room that groups can book. Salinas Pizza & Pints, at 931 North Main, came back in a smaller, brighter storefront after years on East Laurel, and the Crab Bucket serves Cajun-style seafood a little farther up the road. Tacos Acambaro on East Alvin Drive cooks from family recipes. Steve's Filipino Asian Market and Mabuhay Filipino Store stock Filipino groceries. In Santa Lucia Village the homes sit on the residential blocks behind the commercial frontage, so a quiet street is usually one turn away from the traffic. Santa Lucia Park is the one park within its lines. The bigger parks are just across the line or a short drive away, including Laurel Neighborhood Park in Sherwood Gardens and the creekside paths of Natividad Creek Park. Getting around is mostly by car. Highway 101 is close for trips north and south, and Monterey-Salinas Transit runs buses around the city. The cost of living along a corridor like this is noise, since much of the area's traffic funnels onto the same few blocks. Most weeks Santa Lucia Village works as a place for errands on the flat and, once in a while, for dinner on the hill.