Mini Honeymoon in Monterey

We decided to take a mini honeymoon in Monterey the weekend of November 1st. I've always wanted to visit the Monterey Aquarium and hearing nothing but awesome things about the Aquarium peaked my curiosity and desire to visit that place even more. So I was pretty excited to go and Andrew was pretty down too, "as long as I get to pet some sting rays," he said.

Here we are, taking the first picture of the trip. Ptolemy wouldn't let us leave. While we were packing up the car, he kept jumping in and refusing to get out. We literally had to pull him out of the car, poor thing. If we could take him, we totally would have.

 

Newly weds!

Seeing signs for Paso Robles, we started hankering for some coffee, so we yelped a place called Dark Nectar in a small little town called Templeton. We totally got lost going there. Stupid ass GPS. It told us to go down this weird old country road into the middle of no where and kept saying our destination was "on the right," when there was clearly no building in sight. This was very frustrating. But, we ended up pulling over and I called the place and he told us to keep going in the direction opposite of what our GPS was telling us until we see a huge grey barn/grainery. "Ya can't miss it," he said. So, we continued on our trek and spotted the big, tall barn right away. Did not expect to find ourselves in a very cute town with lots of nice people. It seemed like everyone (mostly high school kids) were out and about on the street and we didn't know why.

This was a big ass barn/building that held grain smack dab in the middle of town.

Here's Andrew waiting patiently for some coffee. The owner was super nice and the coffee was...wow. He was telling us how he's a surfer and has family in Bali so he gets a lot of his beans from there. Pretty cool, I'd have to say. I was very happy that Andrew bought some beans from him.

The reason for all the kids on the street was that they were having a home coming parade. Pretty festive! So we hung out in front of the shop and watched the parade for a while.

Peter Pan theme! I think....

Kickass Star Wars Themed Float...

Andrew and his helpless need to pet every sweet dog he sees (one of the reasons I love this man).

 

Before we headed back to the freeway, Andrew saw a little house - that said "Donuts" and of course we had to stop, haha. We then continued to Monterey.

We stayed at Casa Munras, which was a super cute old, Spanish Style hotel. The room was super simple, not bad.

 

 

 

After dumping all of our stuff in our room, we took off to explore the town. We took a drive past Fisherman's Wharf and the harbor and I could already tell that we were going to have a great time walking around and looking at everything. Monterey is truly beautiful. Our first stop was this this little shack called Recycled Records. It was super small so he wasn't in there very long. Then we walked around and checked out some thrift/furniture stores.

After driving around some more, we found another record shop and there was a band performing in the front. Andrew didn't like their music but I didn't mind it. There was a pretty big crowd hanging out on the street watching them perform. It was surfy/folky/rock kinda music and I enjoyed watching them on the street while he record shopped. This was a tiny shop as well so he was pretty much in and out of there. By that time, our tummies were grumbling.

I yelped an awesome place that served steak called Montrio Bistro. The food was amazing.

We had crab cakes for appetizers. The sauce made the dish so flavorful.

Andrew enjoying his baby kale salad.

Have to have a glass of wine with dinner!

Andrew ordered halibut cheeks. He was kinda freaked out at first because neither of us had ever tried halibut cheeks and he was worried if he made the right decision. But he did. He couldn't stop raving about how yummy they were. I forgot what the yellow things were that were served with it.

I ordered the Pesto-rubbed Prime Sirloin whipped potatoes, Brussels sprouts, dates, smoked bacon, red wine which was frickin' amazing.

We went all out and ordered coffee and dessert after. Andrew ordered the bread pudding and I ordered creme brulee.

 

 

 

By this time, we were so full that when we started walking back to the car, we weren't paying attention to where we were going and we kinda got lost and couldn't find the car. But we ended up walking back to the restaurant and tried again. Second time, bingo. We didn't know if we wanted to go back to the hotel and pass out, or keep exploring the town so we could walk off the food we ate. I was so tired and bloated but that's what I get for eating so much. So, I reluctantly agreed to walk around with Andrew, at least until our tummies went down a little bit. I felt so drunk with food that walking was so hard for me, haha, especially when we had to walk uphill and up stairs. I am such a sloth sometimes.

So we headed down to Cannery Row which was pretty much down the street from the first record store we went to.

 
 
We walked one of the piers and went down into the sand and climbed onto and around the rocks watching the waves crash and what not.

 

The ocean at night is so creepy but lovely.

 

Never fails. Andrew found a candy store.

Almost sounds like something else...

I'm not sure why I took so many pictures of the candy store but I really liked how it was laid out and they had these really cool hanging stuffed jelly fish that I really wanted to buy but didn't want to spend 40 frickin' dollars on. Why didn't I take pictures of them? I don't know.

In honor of "Big," we hung out with Zoltar.

Me? Neat and tidy? I laugh.

Andrew is reminded during every trip of how much I love to take pictures of everything and anything. You can it on his face, hahaha. This picture is creepy because it looks like Zoltar is staring right at Andrew. Daaammn...

 

When we got back to the hotel there was some crazy party going on next door to us. It sucked because the walls were paper thin and you could hear them yelling and speaking in Spanish and had Mariachi/Club music blaring. We were like, "OK, it's like 11:30pm. They're being rude." So, Andrew called the concierge and asked if someone could tell them to keep it down. They confronted the situation right away but it still took them a while to shut up so we didn't go to sleep til late. But, we ended up watching this pit bull rescue show that made me wish there was such a thing as a la carte cable where you can just choose the channels you want for a reasonable fee every month. If that were the case, I would want Animal Planet just to watch this show.

The next morning, I got up pretty early and got dressed. While Andrew was prettying himself up, I walked across the street to this local joint called the Wild Plum Cafe & Bistro and got us some coffee. They are organic/fair trade type of restaurant so when they didn't have Equal for his coffee he was bummed. But he ended up getting some from the concierge. Ah, the little things I remember haha....anyway, when Andrew was finally ready, he wanted more coffee so we walked back there and got some more. He was pretty impressed with their breakfast so we decided to eat there before we left for home.

On our way to the Aquarium! Silly face! Check!

I'm so orange...I don't think it's my makeup. I think it might be the camera. Yeah, we'll blame the camera, for now.

 

  

  

    

I am obsessed with seahorses and jellyfish. I was extremely pleased with their jellyfish exhibit and how many different species they had. I could have stayed in that section forever.

  

    

             

The picture of the jellyfish on the bottom right were actually suuuuuuuuuuuper tiny!!!

  

These jellyfish looked like they had Christmas lights glowing on them.

  

More closeups of these badass creatures!!! I wish I could touch them, but yeah, I know,
you can die...

 Upside down jellyfish, WHAAAT??!

The shark tank was pretty sweet as well. 

We also saw a huge octopus that I couldn't really take a picture of and some really cute otters who reminded me of Ptolemy. I really loved my experience at that Aquarium. Andrew really loved it too and the fact that they have a Peet's Coffee in there, haha!

While we were browsing the gift shop, we struck up a conversation with an employee and asked him where the best place was to get fish and chips locally. So he told us about this British pub called The Crown and Anchor. We headed over there and I loved how we had to take stairs down into the Pub. The decor was pretty awesome too. I felt like I was on Captain Hook's ship or something.

Can't hang out at a Pub and not have a beer!

The fish and chips DID NOT disappoint. My mouth is watering just looking at this picture because they were cooked and seasoned perfectly. I also had a cup of their clam chowder which was bomb too.

After this we ended up randomly walking around Old Town Monterey which was kinda interesting. I kinda felt like I was in the Alamo (I've never been to the Alamo, so I could be wrong). We got out of there pretty fast and ended up driving to the harbor, parked and walked along the coast line to look at all the ships and to admire the seals.

 

Boo pic!

Oh hi! Our camera has some tonal issues, I think. Here's another picture of orange me, looking like an oompaloompa, haha.

Look at them seals and all their lazy glory!

Andrew's coworkers suggested that we do the 17-mile drive through Pebble Beach to Carmel so we could see the "love tree" (I just call it that, it's really called "The Lone Cyprus"). This drive had the most gorgeous views of forest and ocean.

Not sure where we were at this point, but we ended up stopping and explored through the trees. This view was amazing. The photo does not do it justice. The forest went on forever, it seemed, and there were hints of orange here and there throughout and to top it off, a roaring ocean with waves rushing onto the shore. And you could still hear the sound of the ocean from this point! Wow, our minds were blown.

Andrew decided to see if we could find a path to the ocean.

 

And...it was far. And steep. So, we got back in the car and kept driving.

Then we saw a couple of deer grazing and we decided to park and creep up on them. I didn't get very close...I just zoomed in and took a couple pics.

We thought we were getting lost again...because we were trying to find the Cyprus. But we later found out you have to drive through the Pebble Beach Golf Course and follow the striped lines on the street. How convenient!

When we finally arrived at the Lone Cypress, we got out and walked around down into the lower pier.

The view was incredible and there's just something so peaceful about this spot. I'm glad we found it.

The end of the drive is all along the coast line and it was just gorgeous. There was a couple getting married on the shore but it was so windy so her long veil was flying everywhere and it looked like she had a hard time standing. Looked like something out of a movie! It was so cute!

Our last night there, we ended up eating at the Fisherman's Wharf because I really wanted a bread bowl with clam chowder. So we randomly decided on this tiny Trattoria on the pier.
I ended up getting their margherite pizza (it was also my snack on the way home) and Andrew got a chicken dish that looked mighty yummy.

Then we went home and decided to enjoy the rest of the night in our hotel and relax the night away.

The next morning we checked out and had breakfast at the Wild Plum Cafe. Our breakfast was yummy and healthy! Mmmm! Andrew bought a whole bunch of pastries from their bakery and they were mighty tasty.

This was the last picture I took of the trip on our way home. I had to stop and take a picture of this giant old man with his cabbage balls!

And that was our mini honeymoon! Special thanks to Mom and Dad for the whole trip! We had a blast!