Monterey is a much shorter drive compared to San Diego. I would just drive there and enjoy. The intercontinental is in a gorgeous location infested with tourists and it’s purely safe. Even if you don’t want to enjoy the aquarium or bubba gump’s, there are so many nice places to go by foot. You can rent a fun surrey. You can also drive your rental to pacific grove and carmel. You can even drive to Big Sur. You can pay money go go to pebble beach if you’re into golf. I’m a mega fanatic for carmel and monterey. We only stay at the Hyatt in carmel for hyatt reasons - I’ve definitely had a little IC envy while passing it en route to bubba gump’s. :-)

ps in the 1970s, mad magazine had a comic of a guy who traveled to loads of dangerous places on the globe. His buddy asked how it went and the punchline “then I got mugged at the airport”

in 1987 novel Rules of Attraction (Bret Easton Ellis), Victor Johnson (future star of Glamorama) has traveled throughout Europe with lotsa dating action and his chapter ends with getting mugged at AMS.

all my travels and probably tons of other FlyerTalkers traveling and I’m pretty sure I’ve never read about an airport mugging. I’ve never experienced stolen luggage (just delay that resulted in delivery). Zero theft with tsa. Zero mugging for me.