Monterey/Santa Cruz part 1

We took a short 2 day trip to Monterey and Santa Cruz this past weekend. We left Friday morning and got into Monterey around 1:00p.m. The fog was just starting to lift as we drove into town, it was about 65 degrees. Our first stop was the Aquarium, I've been wanting to visit it and since the g-daughter is here that was a good excuse to so. It was really interesting and they had some great exhibits.. the best was the otters. They had both river otters and the sea otters on display. They are so cute! Unfortunately we got there just after feeding time for the sea otters but also it was good since the crowd was just leaving and we got right up to the window and could watch their antics. The other interesting thing was the Ocean Sun Fish. We were looking at a tank of large fish and sea turtles when up from the depths comes this "thing" I had never seen anything like it before.. At first I didn't know if it was a fish or exactly what it was.. It was this huge silver alien looking thing. It didn't look like fish other than it had fins on either side of it's body... The face reminded me of the man on the moon. If you look at the moon you see a face, that is what the Ocean Sun Fish face was like. Weird as that sounds, it was the strangest thing I've ever seen. It's something you'd see in a nightmare. I tried to take a picture of it, but taking picture through glass doesn't work all you get is a bright spot from the flash and your own reflection. So, I Googled this picture of the Ocean Sun Fish. Image
On to prettier things, they had several displays of jellyfish. all shapes, sizes, colors they were beautiful. There was also a beautiful exhibit of blown glass jellyfish by Dale Chihuly.There were lots of hands on exhibits for the kids and a lot of information about the vanishing species of fish and the results of over fishing. It takes about 2 hours or so to go through the aquarium, plus shopping time. Of course we had to visit all the gift shops which are conveniently located after each section.

After going through the aquarium we were all a little hungry but it was already 4 O'clock. We checked out a couple of restaurants on Cannery Row and settled on Louie Linguini's for a light snack. My G-daughter and I split a bread bowl of clam chowder which was thick,creamy and had lots of clam pieces in it. The bread was a great sour dough. Charlie had the Ceasar with Shrimp. He proclaimed it to be very good.While we were souvenir shopping Charlie was talking to one of the docents and asked where a good place for dinner was. We were told that the Sardine Factory was an excellent place. Right after we had our snack we asked directions to the Sardine Factory and walked a few blocks over there and made reservations for dinner. More on dinner later.

We then checked into our hotel,we were staying at the Hotel Pacific. It was a located just a few -minutes from Cannery Row. The hotel is done in a Spanish style with court yards and fountains. We had a double room mini suite (2 double beds). The room had hardwood floors, a small sitting room with a fire place a small eating area with a mini fridge, coffee maker. The bathroom was all done in Spanish tile, it had a shower at one end and bathtub at the other. They had goose down feather beds with down comforters and down pillows, ultimate comfort! It also had a balcony with a couple of Adirondack chairs and table overlooking an overgrown garden, but it was a nice place to just sit and read or have a cup of coffee in the morning.

It was a really nice room and hotel. It also had a spa, which the next time I would definitely try. The only drawback was the garage, it was way too small to accommodate all the cars. It was also a tight squeeze for a Suburban. When we came back from dinner there wasn't any space available. One of the staff directed our car and another to park in the handicap space. We were hoping our car was still there in the morning. When paying $16.00 a night for parking I think they should be able to provide a space for every guest.

The other nice touch was the afternoon tea from 4-6 o'clock and a continental breakfast from 7-10 o'clock ... more on that later.

Pacific Hotel

300 Pacific Street

1-800-554-5542.