Weekend Trip to Monterey Bay Aquarium!

This past weekend, my girlfriend, her family, and I decided to head to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I haven’t visited the aquarium since I was about ten years old, and I didn’t remember much about it.

First off, the Monterey Bay area was beautiful. Cannery Row offered wonderful weather, shops, and restaurants. The aquarium was huge: two stories of all sorts of aquatic exhibits. My favorite exhibit was probably the “Outer Bay Tank” it had all sorts of salt-water sharks, fish, and rays. There were three levels where you could view all the fish swimming around. My girlfriend’s favorite exhibit was the kelp forest tank. This exhibit holds huge kelp plants that grow the full length of the aquarium; 2 stories high! It also holds a lot of local fish that line the Monterrey Bay coastline.

Other attractions you may want to check out include: “jellies: living art”, the penguin exhibit, sea otters, and the new “wild about otters” Exhibit. Make sure you plan your trip according to the aquariums feeding shows:

Kelp Forest: 11:30am & 4:00pm daily
Sea Otters: 10:30, 1:30, 3:30 daily
Outer Bay: 11:00am Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday

Make sure you go to the exhibit where the feeding is held at least 10-15min in advance to get a good place to stand and view the show; it gets crowded!

After the aquarium, we decided to go to dinner at the Chart House located at the southern end of Cannery Row. This restaurant can get a little pricey, but I love their food!

Seating Suggestion:
Ask to sit at a window table that overlooks the kelp bed. During our dinner we saw lots of otters and dolphins playing in the water.

Menu suggestions include:

Appetizer:
Crab, avocado mango stack

Starters:
New England clam chowder
There’s an Excellent Salad bar.

Entrees:
Stuffed baked shrimp (6 shrimps stuff with crab served with veggies and rice pilaf)
All their steaks are also great

Dessert:
The “Hot Chocolate Lava Cake” (Godiva chocolate liqueur, molten center, Dreyer’s® vanilla ice cream, served with warm chocolate sauce and Heath Bar Crunch) is a MUST but make sure to order it with your entrees because it is a soufflé that requires time to bake and prepare.

Pictures (Click Thumbnail To View Larger Image):

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