EZTrip.com International Destination Guide and Hotel Listings

A few miles north of Monterey along the peninsula, PACIFIC GROVE - or "Butterfly Town USA," as it likes to call itself - began as a campground and Methodist retreat in 1875, where Christian revivalists prohibited booze, bare skin and reading the Sunday newspapers, and which still holds ornate wooden cottages from those long-forgotten days. One of the few other reminders of that pious period is the Gothic Revival church St Mary's by the Sea , Central Ave at 12th Street, an 1887 redwood marvel with a signed Tiffany window near the altar. Ocean View Boulevard circles the coast around the town, passing the headland of Lovers Point - originally called Lovers of Jesus Point - where preachers used to hold sunrise services. Surrounded in early summer by the colorful red-and-purple cloaks of blooming ice plant, it's one of the peninsula's best beaches . Every year, from November through early March, hundreds of thousands of golden Monarch butterflies come to Pacific Grove to escape the winter chill, forming orange and black blankets on the Butterfly Trees , on Ridge Road, a block west of Lighthouse Avenue. At the end of the avenue, near the tip of Monterey Peninsula, stands the 150-year-old Point Piños lighthouse (Thurs-Sun 1-4pm; free), the oldest continuously operating lighthouse on the California coast and, perhaps contrary to grander expectation, is basically a charming little farmhouse with a revolving light poking out from its roof.