Monterey, California, one of my all time favorite places to visit! I love it because its just a beautiful all around place. This is a place that I feel everyone should visit at least once. We drove in for the weekend and stayed at a Motel 6. The next morning we woke up early, walked over to Denny’s, had an awesome breakfast, and headed out to the Old Fisherman’s Wharf. The one thing that I love about Monterey, is that when visiting there may be a lot of people, but it never feels too crowded. We drove in early and parked on the roof of the Monterey East Parking garage, located across from the Wharf on Tyler St. From here, we walked to and through the Old Fisherman’s Wharf, along the trail through Cannery Row and visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
This was such a beautiful day, the weather was pretty much perfect! I was surprised at how empty the parking garage was when we arrived. I guess I am used to visiting so many places where leaving early is a must to get parking, etc. A lot of people also park closer to the Wharf. There is a parking lot across the street, if you go and would like to park a bit closer you can park there too. This parking lot; however, does get pretty busy and can fill up fast, at least the times that I’ve been here, it has. I love to walk however, so parking a little bit cheaper at the garage was nice. In plus parking on the roof gave us a bit of a view.
We first visited the Wharf, which was lovely. There are tons of shops and restaurants on the Wharf and a beautiful view of Monterey. When we first walked up to the Wharf and when we were leaving I was a little bummed that we didn’t see this guy with a little monkey that always did tricks the previous years that I had visited, but there was this gentleman who was playing music and it sounded quite lovely. I love seeing life and soulful music, it can be so liberating to hear. You can see a video of him playing on our Instagram page.
Below you can see as we began to walk alone the trail. You can see the boats, and the side of Old Fisherman’s Wharf. Monterey is just beautiful!
There’s a trail from the Wharf that leads to Cannery Row, this was a good walk. There were also lots of bikers. Along this walk we stopped to take lots of pictures, really just sit in the moment and enjoy the view, and well check out this next picture!
Look at these adorable sea lions! There were so many along this dock. They were adorable to watch too! In the second picture if you look across the way you can see the sea lions completely taking over the ramp! They are literally just enjoying life! Pretty awesome to see!
From the docks, they also have a restroom near, we headed back to the trail and walked through Cannery Row. Cannery Row has some more shops and more places to grab some food.
In the distance you can see the tan building, that is the Monterey Bay Aquarium! This visit it had probably been close to 10 years since I had last been at the Aquarium! To me Aquariums are so magical. Just being able to see the ocean life that we wouldn’t otherwise be to able to see is a neat experience.
There was a line, but know that if you come to the Monterey Bay Aquarium you can actually purchase your tickets online so that you don’t have to wait in-line. We ended up getting our membership tickets because they weren’t that much more than the general admission tickets. The membership tickets allow us to come back and not have to pay again and also gives us discounts on purchases, and access to special exhibits and things of the sort.
One thing that I didn’t notice until this visit, was that the Monterey Bay Aquarium is a nonprofit. This is great because this means that when visiting this aquarium, we are helping to contribute to the animals. There were some exhibits that took in disabled animals to help most of them heal to be able to return to the wild.
Of all the exhibits, I have to say that the jellyfish exhibit was the most amazing exhibit. I’ve been to quite a few aquariums, but this visit I saw some jellyfish that I feel I haven’t seen or even heard of before and I learned some really amazing stuff about jellyfish.
Here are some astonishing jellyfish facts:
This jellyfish is known as a Lobed Comb Jellyfish. This jelly fish floats within the currents and spreads out its lobes like a baseball glove to catch its food. Each lobe has tiny fine hairs that the jellyfish uses to guide the food to the jellyfishes’ mouth. What was amazing to me with this jellyfish is that you can see little lights (the white edged parts in the photo) flow through like an electrical current. That was amazing to see!
This jellyfish is known as a Sea Nettle. The tentacles on this jellyfish are so effortless, yet extremely deadly. The tentacles fire thousands of stinging cells. This paralyzes it prey. The jellyfish then uses mouth arms to carry to food to its mouth.
Lastly, this jellyfish is known as the Cross Jelly. These were just the neatest things to see in person. They are transparent and were floating effortlessly through the water. These jellyfish hide in plain site and are protected because they cannot be seen by its prey.
These little guys looked neat just standing up in the sand as they are. These little guys are known as Garden Eels. They gather, graze and are often, mistaken as sea grass, they grab any plankton floating by. Can you imagine seeing this these all burrow down at once? This is what happens when they get startled.
How beautiful is this view? This was a balcony along the Monterey Bay Aquarium that you can walk out to, to get some fresh air and get some amazing views of the sea!
After out time at the Aquarium, we were hungry! We walked a ton and although the Aquarium had a cafe, we wanted to sit down at a restaurant for dinner. We decided to stop at Bubba Gumps on our way back. The food was amazing to say the least, the service was great, and their sign service was unique too! You flip the signs when you need service or you flip the sign that says, “Run Forest Run” when you don’t need service.
I could not visit Monterey without making sure to stop at the beach. We made good time on our trip here, so decided to head to the beach after our early dinner. The beach was perfect, the parking was easy, and the best part was that it wasn’t very crowded!
Monterey is just an all around beautiful place! I recommend the itinerary that we took and for people to visit the beautiful Monterey, California at least once. I have yet to be disappointed on a visit here. Stay tuned for our other blogs and check out our Instagram page for video footage of this visit to Monterey! Last, but not least, make sure to subscribe via email to get the latest on post and more!
