Anniversary - #1

Could you believe it? We've been married a whole year! One year. Uno Anos. And, let me tell you, its been quite the year. Marriage, new jobs, stress, moving back to California, job hunting, being on opposite coasts for two months, starting a new job. It's been crazy!.

Our anniversary was on June 3, and to celebrate, our gift to each other was to take a couple day trip down to Monterey. Later, I found out that the hubby wasn't completely stoked to go, but he gave it a shot since I wanted to go (see, already learning!) and was pleasantly surprised. I guess he didn't realize how cute and quaint the area was!

We stayed at this brand new hotel called The Clement Monterey. At that time, the bellman said it was only open for about 10 days. The views were beautiful and the room was gorgeous. The little fireplace was great since it was quite chilly at times for those of us with Florida blood still running through our veins. I would definitely recommend the hotel since its right there on Cannery Row and literally next door to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We mostly parked the car while we were there and walked where we wanted to!

Here's a picture of Eli and I behind the hotel overlooking the ocean. By the way, you'll see this pose quite a bit whenever I wanted a picture of us together. He has the long arms, and there wasn't always someone walking by to take our picture.


Here's a picture of the back of our hotel. We sat by the outdoor fireplaces for a bit and just looked out over the ocean. Pretty!!!Since this is how the pictures loaded, I'll pop over to our drive over 17-Mile Drive. This area has beautiful scenic views over the ocean. Pebble Beach golf course is also on this scenic drive. Every once in a while we'd stop and just take pictures or just take in the views. LOVE the houses on the drive, too. Let's just say, some of those houses were over $10M, I'm sure!

Here's a picture of us overlooking a piece of the golf course.

Yeah...there were signs to not feed the animals. What do you think...were those signs effective? Poor little big-boned squirrel!

Here's another shot I took. I don't know why, but I love this picture!
One of the stops was overlooking this lone Cyprus tree. It really old and has withstood a lot of weathering. In addition, I believe the logo for my old highschool, Monterey Bay Academy, is based on this tree.
Before taking the car out to 17-Mile Dr., we walked over to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It wasn't the largest aquarium I've been to, but it has really spectacular exhibits which beat out other aquariums. We were one of the first visitors, so we were able to have some exhibits to ourselves before the school groups started coming in. That was nice since there is something about water that is very calming to the soul.

Eli took a picture of me in front of this HUGE aquarium, and he captured this school of fish perfectly! I was fascinated and felt like a little girl mesmerized by what I saw.
One of the exhibits started by the people walking in to the room and looking up and seeing a 360-degree tank of fish just swimming in circles. It was awesome! We just stared and stared.
My favorite part of the aquarium was actually the jellyfish. I couldn't stop taking pictures! Since I accidentally left my camera charger at home, I wanted to conserve my battery...but that was very hard with the jellyfish exhibit!

After 17-mile dr., we ended up walking around Carmel. There were tons of cute little shops and quaint little restaurants.

We were walking near this park, and I had to stop and take a picture of this statue sitting on the park bench. It was of this little old couple still looking very much in love. I thought how I hoped we'd be able to get to that stage in our life. A complete life together with kids and a family and a lifetime of memories together.

All in all, it was an amazing trip, and I'm so glad we were able to have it!