Monday, August 4, 2008

Monterey Bay Aquarium



Yesterday we went to Monterey in order to escape the heat. It was so refreshing to be out of this hot weather and gross air. Towards the end of the day we actually had to buy sweatshirts! I felt like such a tourist. We started out at the aquarium, which the kids l-o-v-e-d. We did the older part first, and the newly remodeled Splash Zone. We discovered that European tourists are extremely rude, and that it was pointless to bring the strollers in because Ruth and Alden preferred to sprint between exhibits. Ruthie's favorite animal is the "habapuss" aka octopus, Alden seems to prefer the starfish and kelp. We took a break around lunch time and had some pizza on Cannery Row.


After pizza we went to Trader Joe's and bought some flowers, then we went to the cemetary and put them at my grandfather's grave. To escape the somberness, we then took the kids to Dennis the Menace Park. Unfortunately our battery died at the aquarium earlier in the day, so no pictures of the twins having fun. While I was waiting for Ruthie at the bottom of the slide, I had a nice chat with a woman who just moved to the area a year ago. I commented that the park had changed a lot since I played there as a kid and she said "oh the park has been here that long?" I'm not sure what her interpretation of "that long" was, and I started to wonder if I'm really old, then I realized that I played there TWENTY YEARS AGO. Crap I'm old.


After we left the park, we walked around Fisherman's Wharf and chowed down on some free chowder samples, and we had a caricature drawn of the kids. We also went to the candy store and Ruthie picked out "candy balls" and Alden chose gold coins. That boy, he's all about the money! He loves carrying coins and paper dollars.

After the Wharf we went back to the aquarium and went through the Outer Bay area. The aquarium is open until 8PM on weekends in the summer, but it was mostly deserted. It was so neat to have room to let the kids run and shout without worrying about losing them or getting the evil eye from the previously mentioned rude European tourists. Seriously though, at the Splash Zone, Alden splashed some water. Approximately three drops landed in the vicinity of this little girl's sleeve. The five adults with her all shouted "hey hey hey" and shot Alden dirty looks and clucked their tongues and shook their heads. WHAT THE HELL?! I looked at them and said "he's 2 and you don't all need to yell at him". Ugh. Asses. It's not like he dragged her into the bathroom and gave her a swirlie.

Anyway, here are some pictures!



1 comment:

Jennifer said...

Maybe he should have given her a swirlie =)

We were at a museum yesterday on the Mall. We were sitting the in cafeteria and Hannah was being Hannah and some snotty tourist turned around and said "She is obscenely loud. Can you do something about that?" I told her she could move and that should solve the problem. She wasn't even being THAT loud. Maybe I should have given her a swirlie!