Before I leave for Hong Kong, I wanted to visit places I’ve always wanted to go and one of the them is the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Since the aquarium opens at 9:30am, we left at 8:30am so we would arrive still sort of early to beat the crowd because it was a weekend.

We found parking easily since it was around 10:30am when we got there. As we walked through Cannery Row I thought I was on a vacation in the Caribbean (okay, maybe I am being dramatic but it was quite beautiful haha).

On a sidenote, I took all the pictures on my Nexus 5 with a wide angle lens I bought from Photojojo! I was super excited to use the lens!

As we approached the aquarium, we saw a line outside the door and was hoping that was the line to purchase tickets because we weren’t expecting a line that early in the morning. Good thing we bought tickets online the night before and we were able to get in super quick.

The first things we went to see were jellyfish!

^ I forgot if these were mackerels or anchovies

^ These are blackfooted penguins!

^ I think these people are learning how to scuba dive

It took us about less than 2 hours to walk through everything in the museum. Afterwards, we went to Vivolo’s Chowder House for lunch because it was on the top of the list when we yelped for places to eat.

We ordered half a crab sandwich, a bowl of clam chowder and fish & chips. At first it didn’t look like it was that much food but we were so full halfway into eating.

We wanted to go visit one more place before driving back to the bay so we decided to go to Pebble Beach (thinking that Pebble Beach was the name of an actual beach). When we got there we saw a gate and a sign that said $10.00 fee. My friend and I were both confused as to why we had to pay to go to a beach. I paid anyways and we got a brochure of how to get there and about Pebble Beach.

We drove through what’s called 17-Mile Drive to get there. Long story short, turns out Pebble Beach was a resort area and not an actual beach (although there was a small beach next to the golf range next to the hotel). We were so disappointed and felt so out of place because everyone there had really nice car and looked like they were from the upper class.

To make up for the $10.00 that I paid, I decided to have a photoshoot to make myself feel better about paying the entrance fee and not being able to go to the beach haha.