MONTEREY, CA

We stayed in Monterey for four full days--in part to wait out the "storm of the decade" that produced waves of over 30 feet in height. Our charming old Victorian hotel, imaginatively named the Monterey Hotel, was a bargain due to our fourth floor room with no elevator working. The street in front of the hotel becomes a farmers' market every Tuesday all day, so our arrival on a Tuesday was quite festive. We did several touristy things--visiting Fishermen's Wharf, The old Cannery Row district of sardine/Steinbeck fame, the Aquarium, where we saw hammerhead sharks and shimmering schools of sardines in multi-million gallon tanks, dancing jellyfish, and other wonders. We liked a basement pub, a Chinese buffet, and a couple seafood places for our meals. All in all one of our better stops. After San Francisco's congregation of sea lions, we immediately recognized their barking--audible from a half mile away at our hotel. The jetty was swarming with them. The locals explained that their diet of a hundred pounds EACH of seafood per day make them relatively unpopular with local fishermen and other human beings who'd prefer to catch or eat the fish themselves. Police blocked off access to any road by the water--surf was slamming across the roads and leaving kelp on the facades of houses normally 100 yards from the water. Our attempt to find access led us through the derelict remains of Fort Ord, a booming military base when I last visited Monterey decades ago.

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