We got our rental car and headed toward Monterey, CA. From what I understand, Corey selected Monterey from a work colleague who strongly recommend it. It's a beautiful part of the U.S. We have an ocean view room at the Monterey Bay Inn and was told it had sunset views.
It took us about an hour and a half to drive to Monterey after flying into San Francisco. This Inn is right on Cannery Row, a tourist area, but next to the San Carlos Beach, which is popular with surfers and divers. It's right next to a bicycle/running path that runs from one end of Monterey County to the other. It was beautiful as we pulled up!
We got in around 5:30 PM (PT) and learned that the sun set between 6:00-6:30 pm (from the front desk clerk). As we sat on our balcony that overlooked the ocean, we quickly realized that there was no way the sunset over the ocean at Monterey Bay, let alone from the view on our balcony. Although we are on the west coast, our bay actually faces east!
In talking with people, the definitions of sunset vary. Our definition of sunset was to actually watch the sun set over the ocean. Some people think of it as the sun simply setting (ocean view or not). Regardless, the view from our hotel room is gorgeous! You can hear the ocean waves as they come ashore.
We walked Cannery Row with no plans of where to eat and ended up at Paradiso next to the window overlooking an ocean view. It is an Italian/Seafood restaurant, which was very good. I decided I wanted as much seafood as possible considering our location to the beach. I ended up ordering butterflied king crab legs over a bed of pasta with a lemon, cream sauce. My husband had butterflied salmon stuffed with spinach and artichokes and topped with hollandaise sauce. Both were delicious!
As we ate our dinners, we watched overlooked a small beach, which apparently isn't safe to swim in. The waves crashed on small groups of rocks, seaweed floated back and forth with the current, and we watched seals swim in the water.
The sea otters were amusing to watch. They seemed to tease the numerous birds who floated in the water. They would float, belly side up, and wait for the birds to get close. As the birds got closer, they would flip over into the water and resurface a few yards away, waiting for the birds to approach again before the game continued.
Because of the time difference, we were exhausted by 7:00 PM (PT), which was 10:00 pm (EST). We had general ideas of what we wanted to do during the week but decided not to confirm anything so that we had some flexibility.
Day 0 - was a good start!
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