Our anniversary getaway

Every year for our anniversary we celebrate by going out to dinner at a nice restaurant. This year we decided to get out of town for the weekend. We have been wanting to go to Monterey, Ca so that's where we went.

My plan was to leave friday morning at 6:45, drop Echo off at the Pet Hotel and be on the road by 7am. I accidentally told James we have all day to get there if we want, so he took that as permission to sleep in. After jumping on him and stealing his covers we were on our way only an hour and a half late.

About an hour outside of Monterey, we saw signs for the San Juan Bautista Mission. Since I grew up in the Midwest, I didn't get the chance to learn about and visit missions so we decided to stop and take a look. It was a beautiful place with tons of history. Here are a few pictures I took:

Once we arrived in Monterey, we stopped to eat lunch at a local pizza parlor on cannery row and then headed over to the Aquarium. We spent a few hours looking at all the marine animals. Our favorite exhibit was the jelly fish.

After the aquarium, we walked around cannery row. We had to stop at the dip and dots ice cream parlor for James. I was very excited to see they had moose tracks dip and dots. Yummy!

Around 4pm we headed to our hotel to check in. We stayed at the Portola Hotel & Spa on Fisherman's wharf. This hotel was the fanciest one both of us had ever been in. We had a doorman, valet parking, and they gave us some good freshly made cookies after we checked in. Here is a picture of our room (minus the alcohol and view):

This was the view from the walkway in front of our hotel room.

James seems to be tired all the time. I knew we were going to be in trouble when we walked into the room and James laid down on the bed. I decided that I would let him take a nap while I went down and visited the spa. I never pamper myself so this was a perfect opportunity. An hour and a half later, I came back to the room and woke up James. We then headed out to find a place to eat that wasn't seafood. We walked along all the streets downtown and found a restaurant that one of our friends suggested- Rosines. It was really good food and it hit the spot. After dinner we headed back to our room to change into our swimsuits. I had mentioned to James that this hotel had a nice hot tub so he was very willing to sit in it with me that night.

Saturday morning we slept in and then checked out. We walked to Cannery Row and had Ghirardelli Sundaes for breakfast (YUMMMY!!) and then headed home. We had a wonderful trip, but were very excited to get back home.