(Gabi) Today was off to a relaxing start with a quiet and short drive from Santa Cruz to Monterey. The whole area seemed a bit deserted. May clearly is low season so many things (including the famous Santa Cruz boardwalk) appear to be closed. Together with the grey weather, this made for a rather gloomy atmosphere!

Our mood was lifted by a drive along the gorgeous 17 Mile Drive between Monterey and Carmel. It’s a beautiful gated community in the woods which has the most stunning roads along the coast. The area is dominated by huge golf courses that are literally next to the sea. It’s all very posh and you do pay $10 for the privilege of using their roads.

These fat squirrels (chipmunks?) are everywhere. There are loads of signs saying you shouldn’t feed them. But people are ignoring the signs, judging by this whopper.

The whole area is brimming with sea life like this seagull. Yes, I know. It’s ‘just’ a seagull, but seagulls are exciting to people from land locked countries.

This is the areas famous ‘lone cypress’. This small tree has been perched over the ocean for at least 250 years and they have  reinforced it with steel cables, to make sure it stays put. A very popular motif for the Monterey area and seriously pretty.

We stayed in a nice hotel on Monterey’s Cannery Row (former home of anchovy canneries, made famous by Steinbeck’s novel). It’s a busy, rather touristy area but I quite liked the vibe.

View from our hotel’s rooftop.

Part of Cannery Row.

Today’s highlight was a visit at the famous Monterey Aquarium. I haven’t been to many aquariums but this one has to be my new favorite. I love the focus on local marine life. It’s fascinating to think that so much on display here, is actually living in the ocean just next to the museum.

We started our visit with a quick lunch at the museum café. Enchiladas for Thomie…and garlic fries for me. Yes, I am developing a garlic fries addiction. But they are SO GOOD.

After lunch we ventured over to the touch pools and Thomie manage to stroke a sting ray. Insane!! Touch pools are endlessly fascinating to me. You can touch fish? And coral? And little sea plants?? Mind blown! Thomie said the ray felt a bit leathery but not at all slimly or slippery. Who knew?

We spent a good while marveling at the kelp forest. Kelps (large seaweeds that grow up to 30 -80 meters and form underwater forests) are a completely new concept to me and I found their movements incredibly relaxing. It almost looked like they were ‘breathing’ in time with the waves.

They’re home to loads and loads of types of fish but my fave have to be the huge groups of shoaling fish who all swim into the same direction. I could watch them for hours.

It’s a bit cheesy but true: the jellyfish exhibit almost brought me to tears with its beauty. All those deep blue aquariums with fluorescent creatures that look incredibly ethereal. It’s hard to exaggerate how exquisite they are.

So pretty!!

We saw all kinds of sea creatures and land critters like this napping turtle.

Or these flirty seahorses.

Dinner was yet another great Yelp find: A tiki restaurant called Hula’s. I could have eaten everything on the menu! And you kind of have to get a cocktail in a tiki bar or restaurant. I went for a Hurricane…

and Thomie had a Zombie. Initially, I made fun of him for choosing such a strong cocktails (Zombies usually carry that name for a reason and contain loads of different liquors). But my Hurricane ended up being so much stronger than his cocktail.

Food wise, I had some seriously tasty lime and habanero chicken tacos with plantain mash and black beans.

Thomie enjoyed some soy and pineapple glazed pulled pork with rice and coleslaw. The whole meal was absolutely fantastic, as were the servers and the atmosphere. Funnily enough, one of the waiters turned out to be a Swiss guy from the French speaking part of Switzerland. We chatted with him for a bit and he seemed genuinely excited to see other Swiss people. I would never have expected that I’d be using my French in California. We kept switching between French, English and German which was kind of funny and a good exercise for our brains.