Fun Day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium

Leafy Sea Dragon

My hubby, the boy and I drove down to Monterey to go see the aquarium. The boy has never been to it before. It took us a little while to get going but by mid morning we were on the road. It took us about 2 hours to drive down there. We decided to take Highway 101 and cut over to the coast on Highway 156, which put us in Castroville. As we were driving down Highway 1 in Monterey we saw a sign that said that the aquarium parking lot was full to use the Downtown parking lot so we parked in the Downtown-parking garage. We didn’t know how far away the Monterey Bay Aquarium was so we asked the parking attendant and he said we were 1 ½ away from it but there was a free trolley that came by every 15 minutes to pick us up and take us to the aquarium. So we hopped on the trolley and were dropped off at the aquarium door. So that worked out fine. We had bought and pre-printed our tickets so we didn’t have to wait in line to get in. Hubby and I haven’t been down there since our honeymoon 11 years ago. We enjoyed all of he exhibits. There was a cool seahorse exhibit that wasn’t going to be there that long, the penguins were cool, we watched the sea otters being fed, we also saw an albatross up close that was rescued, there was cool shark tank with a hammerhead, tiger shark in it, the jelly fish were awesome, there was a cool tide pool area for the kids to touch starfish, shell crabs. There was a huge lobster in the bottom of the tank. It was a fun and long day. We were tired after all of that walking around. As we were leaving we found it was a free day for Monterey residents because of the aquariums 85th anniversary. We were wondering why there were so many people in there. My friend and her family showed up there in the afternoon so we briefly got to see them. We just happened to be down there at the same time. We were going to stop in Moss Landing on the way home to get at our favorite Mexican restaurant but we had a late lunch and we weren’t hungry. Of course we had to make a stop at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory store to get some Carmel apples!