The touring begins

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Monterey and Carmel-by-the-Sea

The Lonely Planet guide to California intones the following about Monterey “John Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row immortalised the sardine-canning business that Monterey lived on for the first half of the 20th century. He describes Cannery Row as ‘a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream’. Predictions that over fishing could decimate the business were ignored when the catch reached a peak of 250,000 tons in 1945. Just 5 years later figures plummeted to 33,000 tons and by 1951 most of the sardine canneries had closed, many of them mysteriously catching fire.

Today Cannery Row is mostly a touristy nightmare of chain restaurants and souvenir shops. There are a few exceptional places worth making time for, such as the aquarium, but mostly this is an area to avoid.”

With this in mind we ventured forth to Cannery Row to visit the aquarium!

Monterey seems to be two separate areas, the town and beach areas where Fisherman’s Wharf is located and the Cannery Row area. We navigated our way to Cannery Row, parked the behemoth that is our hire car and set off for the aquarium.

The highlight of the next three hours has to be the Sea Otters. Much larger than our home grown, less salty version and they had also been slightly domesticated to aid husbandry. One of the five otters (we only saw three) spent a fair amount of time retrieving toy balls from the bottom of the pool and then holding them whilst floating around on her back. They were extremely cute and the stuffed toy version of them in the shop did not do them justice.

However we were also entertained by hammer head sharks, leopard sharks , sevengill sharks (yes ‘cos they’ve got seven gills on each side), moray eels, jellyfish, octopus (2 of them is that octopi?), bat ray (could be touched if you could reach), a huge grouper, yellow-fin tuna, shoals of sardines, a sun fish and upside-down fish (Jack’s name for some unknown type of fish). There was also a hands-on area where Ellie touched a sea-cucumber and Jack managed to touch a bat ray. There were also many types of starfish that could be prodded and annoyed.
We could also venture outside to an observation deck where we noticed some seals sitting on some rocks in the bay.

Having had our fill of fish we headed down Cannery Row just to check that the Lonely Planet guide was right (which it was) and it was then back to the car to drive to Carmel-by-the-Sea, hereafter know as Carmel because I can’t be bothered to type the whole name in.

First thing to say about Carmel is that we didn’t see Clint Eastwood - sorry!

Second thing to say about Carmel - it’s not our kind of place. It was full of over-priced, high brow kind of shops. Everything we’d read about Carmel was that it was the place to go shopping. Not so for us, we aren’t old enough, rich enough or pretentious enough for Carmel. Although have to say it was nice to see somewhere in the States that has no neon (which is banned). Pretty enough but no Bourton-on-the-Water (hereafter know as Bourton!).

We scarpered away from Carmel and found our way to the Del Monte Mall (just up the road from our hotel) where we had tea and then watched Hancock at the cinema.

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Photos

Cannery Row
Not that exciting we'd rather go to Weston-Super-Mare

Sea Otters
Aah what a cutie

Carmel-by-the-Sea
Twee

Comments

[Beth]

I Miss you Ellie
Hi Ellie, (oh and Jack and your mum and dad) Sounds like you are having a wicked time, I've just got back from Lanzarote with my dad. we had a great time, loads of swimming but I got an ear infection just like Jack! Too much swimming I think. I love all your photos, it looks like you've been to some great places, can't wait to hear all about it when you come back in year 6, Aghhhhhh. love from Beth xxx