Sunday, 10/2 - Monterey Aquarium

 Monterey

The big thing on the agenda today was visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  First, Mary found a French bakery, the Paris Cafe, for breakfast within walking distance of the hotel.  Then we headed to the aquarium.  

It definitely lived up to its hype.  It was by far the best aquarium I've seen.  And I think what I enjoyed most about it was that almost all exhibits were about the local flora and fauna.

Starting with the Giant Kelp tank.




And the Jellyfish tanks.




And the Open Seas tank.


It was great.  I did enjoy the sea otter tank - they are much larger than I thought - 3 to 4 feet long..

Then we went to In-N-Out Burgers for lunch.  The good news was the line was not too long  (we had seen lines winding around parking lots at some of the other locations).  The bad news is that it was not as good as we remembered.

It was actually in Seaside, just southeast of Monterey.  As we drove there, we passed the Naval Postgraduate School.  I wonder if that is where Bill Brenner went when he and Norma were first married.....

Then we decided to do the 17 mile drive, so we drove back to Pacific Grove and headed out.  The first part was great, with the ocean and beaches and rocks with sea lions on them.



And the golf courses were pretty spectacular.

Then we got into the residential areas and I made the mistake of following the signs to do the entire 17 mile drive, which seemed to go on forever and it wound around the woods - seemed like a 27 mile drive by the time we were done.

We ended up eating at an Italian Restaurant that had a jazz band playing and stopped at Trader Joes for picnic/happy hour supplies.



Link to next post:  10/3 - Pinnacles National Park

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