Day 7: Monterey Bay Aquarium

 We traveled down to Monterey the next day to visit the aquarium. This is by far the nicest aquarium I have ever been to. I think Tom was quite impressed with it. My family used to go once in awhile when I was younger, but I think it had been about 10 years since I had last visited.
We really enjoyed our time there.

The cute sea otters were our first stop. We got to watch them eat lunch.

Who knew that sand dollars were naturally all fuzzy furry like that?

Touching the bat rays has always been one of my favorite things.

My favorite part of this visit to the aquarium was getting to watch through a window as the fish in a giant two-story tank were fed. The sardines were so fascinating, the way the whole school moves together and can instantly change directions in unison. We got to watch as the tuna were fed. Did you know that tuna are like, huge? You could probably get 50 cans out of just one fish. Ok, that's a really rough estimate. But these guys were big. I had no idea. We also watched them feed the sea turtle and the sun fish, which is really ugly. No offense, Mr. Sun Fish.

 I took this picture and I am quite proud of it.

Just a floating piece of seaweed you might think? Look again, it's a sea dragon!

 

My second favorite part was this interactive place where you could create your own jellyfish and then watch them float/swim on the screen in front of you. I could have seriously stayed at this station all day long drawing jellies. It was so fun!

This was Tom's jelly. I think it was supposed to look like me??

Later that day we took trip #1 to Capitola to buy tons of salt water taffy and visit Mr. Toots (a cute little coffee shop) where we enjoyed live music performed by a guy at the piano.

We also went to the movies and saw The Bourne Legacy, which was so intense I think it shaved off 2.37 years of my life. I was literally shaking during the whole movie. Ask Tom. Maybe I should lay off of the intense action movies for the time being.

#3 reason why Don and Stacie are cool: They have a hot tub which we got to relax in that night. To create the perfect ambiance, they even had twinkle lights and soothing music playing.