June 28 - Monterey

I wasn't sleeping very well that night. When I woke up early in the morning I decided to get up and dressed first. I wanted to make sure that we didn't have to move to another Inn for the next 2 days in Monterey and so I went to the receptionist immediately. I could extend our stay by 2 nights without any problems. Relieved I went back to bed again. Christoph hadn't heard anything and was still sleeping like a baby:-)
At 9:00 we had breakfast and thanks to Christoph, who had bought ham and cheese we could put it on the toast instead of jam or marmelade.
Then we went back to our room and from 10:00 to 13:00 I made several telephone calls. Unfortunately all places I called in Big Sur didn't have any vacancy left. The Inn we had in mind the day before (actually that Inn was quite alright but we had decided to make some phone calls first to see if something cheaper was available) was already booked out that morning (we should have made our reservation the day/night before!) and so Big Sur turned out to be a problem.
After checking every single place in Big Sur we found only one place that was still available: Big Sur Lodge, a very expensive place to stay. So I suggest the idea with the bus again but Christoph really wanted to ride the bike to Big Sur (in retrospect I am very thankful for his decision!) Finally he wanted to come to an end and suggest to pay 2/3 of the  total price of 355 USD!!! Now I couldn't resist anymore and so I agreed and booked the Lodge.

The rest of the day we wanted to explore the quite famous Aquarium in Monterey. Now planning was finished and we could continue with sightseeing! At 14:00 we left our room and rode the bikes to the Aquarium which we visited from 14:30 to 18:00.
I can definitely recommend that place and to underline this statement you should see the following pictures I took over there:

Monterey, on the way to the Aquarium

museum, still on the way to the Aquarium

promenade along the shore

biking along the shoreline

the Pier

what a wonderful view
(we didn't really get on because I had to stop that often to take all those pictures:-) )

a harbour seal sunbathing:-)

the Monterey Aquarium

After watching the sea otters being fed we continued our tour to the kelp forest:

kelp forest

kelp forest picture 2

some information

me ordering a seafood meal on the screen and getting some information
from the 3 guys in the background whether that choice of meal was a good or bad one
(related to environmental impact)

Great Tide Pool

I also touched every single animal at the touch pools but no pictures of that experience exists.

Monterey Bay habitats

Monterey Bay habitats

Sand Dollars

information about Sand Dollars

Honeycomb Moray

aren't the colours beautiful?!

  

Blackfooted Penguins

see the black feet?

mmhhh, yummy Anchovies:-)

and some information about Anchovies

Jellies

Purple-Striped Jellies

Sea Nettles

Moon Jellies

Puffin

I loved the section "The Secret Lives of Seahorses":

Zebrasnout Seahorses

some almost unreadable information

do you see the "Weedy Sea Dragons"?
Weedy sea horses are related to seahorses. How can you
tell this fish from its close relative, the leafy sea dragon? The
weedy sea horse wears short, stubby fins compared to its
more flamboyant cousin

Leafy Sea Dragons:
they disguise themselves as seaweed with
dozens of unbelievable, leaflike fins

worth-knowing things about young seahorses

 

Ribbon Pipehorse

and of course some information

For "The Jellies Experience" we were running out of time and only a fee minutes were left for a quick tour:

Moon Jellies again

I had no idea...

amazing, isn't it?

Impressions of Monterey on the way back:

shops and restaurants on the way back

and old train car parked along the promenade

the promenade (for bikers and pedestrians)

the harbour

another harbour seal, so cute:-)

the pier with all its restaurants and shops

After that visit I was really tired and I walked the bike uphill again (even though it was such a big difference to ride the bike without my panniers!). After storing the bikes in our room we took off for dinner. I was too tired so that I didn't join Christoph who went grocery shopping first. Instead of that I ordered noodles for take-out, went back to our room and lay down on the bed for a short nap:-)
At 20:30 Christoph was back and we had dinner together.
Then I continued blogging and at midnight we went to bed.

Tour stages

Tour stage: Monterey Surf Inn to Aquarium and back
Distance: 8.95 km

(I know it is a kind of ridiculous but so I can add at least some more kilometers to my mileage report:-) )