Monterey Aquarium

I'm a bit behind on the posting because this was a long weekend packed with housework and a day-long trip to the South Bay, so I need an extra catch-up post. On Sunday we drove down to Monterey with Devon to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Monterey is about 2-1/2 hours from SF, but unless Devon is napping, she can't go that far in the car seat without getting incredibly fussy. We stopped in Santa Cruz on the way down for a break out of the car and happened to run into a rather bizarre parade that was happening downtown. I honestly have no idea what it was, but it was hosted by the Portuguese community (lots of banners in Portuguese from towns like Turlock and Salinas) and had some kind of Catholic bent (confirmed by Walt, a former Catholic) with a sprinkling of saints and religious iconography. There was a banner for each town that said something in Portuguese and then 3 young girls dressed up in totally over the top young princess outfits -- complete with tiaras and 3' trains -- accompanied by what I assume were their parents. Frankly, it was a bit creepy; it put me in the mind of those horrible child pageants. There were a lot of these community processions and at the end was a rather out of tune marching band. Devon didn't really care about the princess dresses, but she loved the band.

When we got to Monterey, we muddled around and finally parked in a downtown lot, intending to walk to the aquarium. What we didn't realize until after we parked was that the aquarium was 1.2 miles away from where we parked, so we had to hoof it, carrying Devon most of the way. I was also too cheap to order tickets in advance online, because I didn't want to pay the $8 service charge, and totally came to regret that decision -- the line was like being in Disneyland. Walt was entirely entitled to his "I told you so" as we waited in line for half an hour.

The aquarium itself is gorgeous, though, and it made me forget about the long walk and the long wait. We started off at the big central tank, which has schools of anchovies and big fish like tuna in it. Devon really liked that, but she was much more excited when we went to the "touching tank" where you can touch starfish, seaweed and the like. We got kicked out of there rather quickly, I'm afraid, since it turns out that you are supposed to leave the items in the water while you are touching them; Devon was grabbing seaweed and waving it around, which alerted a docent to our unwelcome presence. She kept yelling, "Wawa, wawa!" and was so enamored of both the water and the touching tanks that she had an absolute tantrum when we left.

This made us hightail it outside, which turned out to be a lucky thing, since there is a tidal tank outside that has a wave simulator. She loved this and we stayed for quite a while watching the waves. This tank also has a little plastic bubble at the base which was big enough for Devon to stand up in, and she loved standing in it and feeling like she was surrounded by water.

We finally made it upstairs to the true kiddie section, which was honestly like a supercharged marine theme park. The aquarium has tons of stuff set up for kids of all ages, and Devon loved every bit of it. There was one area that had a sort of waterbed that kids could walk on, and that was really fun. There were also lots of opporunities to get wet, splash in water and so on, which was quite thrilling for Devon. We never made it to any of the rest of the aquarium. I was disappointed about this, since I really wanted to see the special shark exhibit as well as the jellyfish section (which I remember being really fabulous); but Devon had a fabulous time, so that was a win at least. It's just a shame that it's such a long drive from SF.

In the late afternoon we drove up to Los Gatos for a picnic at our friends' place. What had started off as a small gathering of "4 or 5" had morphed into a picnic of about 40 people. It was really relaxing, though, and we had some fabulous food. Devon warmed up to the place after being shy initially; and eventually she was running around having a ball. There were also lots of other kids there, which was a lot of fun for her. One of the picnic guests had bought fireworks, so we stayed a little later than we had intended to watch the fireworks. It had been quite a while since I had home fireworks, and it was a lot of fun. Devon was entranced. The older kids had sparklers, and when I didn't let Devon have her own, she proceeded to launch into ear-splitting yelling and screaming. It just didn't seem fair to her to let others have all of the fun.

The rest of our weekend was spent doing a lot of yardwork. Walt finally got the sprinklers in; I'll post a pic of them when we get a few, since he's justifiably proud of them. We also went on a nice walk through the Presidio with our friend Dana, although Devon was out of sorts. We brought the stroller, and of course then she decided that she didn't want it -- or to be more precise, she wanted to stand up in it and lean out, and when we didn't let her to do that, the entire venture became very unattractive.

I hope everyone has a lovely 4th. I have to say as a sidenote that I just came down from the hill and watching the fireworks over the bay. This will be my last 4th of July in this apartment, where I've lived for almost 10 years. The top of the street has a spectacular view of the bay, and this is the first 4th in my memory when it's been crystal clean and I've actually been able to see every firework. Usually I can only see a burst of red light on the fog bank. It's really quite marvellous to have such a nice send-off.