Carmel, California, is an exclusive town, originally an artists' colony. It is located at the southern end of Monterey Peninsula, just a few miles/kilometers south of Monterey. The town has a refreshingly calm atmosphere that results, in part, from strict zoning laws that ban neon, traffic lights and other trappings of urban development. (The town also seems to have banned empty parking spaces: Expect to spend some time searching for one.) The residential district has no sidewalks or streetlights, and there is no mail delivery. Homes are known by their names rather than addresses. Carmel received a lot of press in the mid-1980s when Clint Eastwood was its mayor.
