Monday in Monterey

On Monday we packed up the circus and headed for Monterey. We had decided to ignore the rain that simply hadn't let up all weekend and make the most of Dadddy's holiday by visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium. (Plus, we liked to think of it as practice for when our friends, the Starlings, move to Monterey this summer!)

First, though, we stopped for bagels to eat on the way.

Toasty bagel with cream cheese. Yum!

Monterey is about an hour and half from us, and the car ride went very smoothly. Madeline fell asleep before she'd even finished her bagel (or the cream cheese, for that matter) and Kathleen happily watched the rainy scenery and looked at books. As we neared the coast, the weather even cleared, giving us beautiful, sunny views of the ocean.

We'd been a little concerned that Monterey would be crazy-busy, given the holiday, but the crowds were very manageable. We found street parking nearby and barely waited in line to enter the aquarium.

We'd taken the girls to visit a little aquarium in Honolulu before we left the island, but this aquarium is nothing like that. It's enormous! The girls were beside themselves. Madeline couldn't stop signing fish or calling out, "FSH!"

Kathleen checked out some new creatures...

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has an entire children's area called the Splash Zone. There, the girls got to watch and (under the supervision of some very sweet volunteers) even touch tidepool creatures. They both loved the starfish. And they seemed fascinated by the kelp crabs and hermit crabs -- but they were in no hurry to touch those! Kathleen went scrambling backwards, away from the water when we even suggested it.

In another area there were sea creature "costumes" to try (an octopus, a sea horse, etc.) and rocking sea horses and a slide. In yet another area, there was water play. After Friday, though, we didn't really need more waterplay, so we saved that for another day. Dadddy crawled through a fish-viewing tunnel with the girls. (Mama waited outside. We didn't need any beached whale episodes at the aquarium!)

And then Daddy snapped a photo of his girls in a giant clamshell!

We meandered some more, venturing into the "rest" of the aquarium and marveling at the beauty of the sea life. We noticed a crowd, and went to check out the commotion. A scuba diver was swimming in one of the exhibits!

The picture is dark, so it's hard to see... but that's a scuba diver in there!

Finally, we stopped by the sea otters. Those cute little critters made a big impression on our girls. Kathleen spent a good portion of that evening pretending to be a baby otter, demonstrating in the bathtub how an otter swims on its back, and referring to Mama and Daddy and Mama Otter and Daddy Otter.

After the otters, we headed out of the aquarium and walked down Cannery Row (yes, Cannery Row of John Steinbeck fame) to get some lunch. We had a tasty meal, let the girls run around a bit in the sunshine, and then headed back to (still rainy) Mountain View.

Our day was a complete success! We're already looking forward to our next visit to Monterey... we're anticipating we'll make the drive down every few months or so to make the most of our aquarium membership. (And to see the Starlings, of course. We can't wait until you get there!)