Cute chocolate mice
"oh no! my ear!"
"Friend, where are you?"
"Oh no! Not me"
No more mice.
There it is.
"My arm! Oh no, now I'm a uniarm!" (if you haven't watched Open Season, you wouldn't get this joke)
Plates full of food.
A thumbs up for the quality and quantity.
Spinach artichoke dip and chip.
Finger Licking Good Buffalo Wings
Empty Plates.
The Happy Bill. It's crazy that the most expensive thing on that bill is the alcoholic strawberry lemonade.
... ... ... ... ... ...
Next stop: Easter lunch at Johnny Carinos:
Rosemary Lemon Chicken
Spicy Skilletini
It was so much food, even I couldn't finish it all.
My friend, M, who is suffering from a food coma after this Easter meal.
Not only are these chocolates super delicious, but the chocolate mice are so adorable, I'm sparing their lives for the time being.
See, aren't the so tiny and cute?
And I also got a chocolate penguin! How do they come up with these things?
Way too cute to eat. Well, to eat right away anyhow. Mice and Penguins have at least a week before they enter the dark tunnel leading to my stomach.
Thank you to my wonderful gal pal, W from Harvard, for such delicious treats!
... ... ... ... ...
In addition to the surprise chocolate delivery, I was done with classes by 11am today, so I spent the majority of the day in my warm, heated bed while munching on chocolates and then taking a very long nap. Nope, didn't do a lick of studying. Indeed, today was a "Good Friday."
It's my birthday in two days so I'll be lazy if I want to.
The highlight of Cannery Row was the wine tasting. As we walked in and out of the various stores of overpriced items, we entered our first retail winery, where we were allowed free wine tastings of four different wines of our choice (well, it was $2 a glass if you chose a wine with an * next to it). I, the "un-refined" one, just tipped the glass back and swallowed the wine in one gulp, and also making a grimace of a face while doing so. The Boy, the more "refined" one in our group, actually did what all those wine connisours do on TV--swivel the glass to airate the wine, smelled it first before tasting, took a little bit of wine and sloshed it around inside the mouth before swallowing. I tried immitating but I looked like an alien trying to drink water so The Boy made me stop trying to be all knowledgeable about tasting wine. Eh, whatever. My favorite is still the Brut sparkling wine. That glass did not make me grimace. I actually wanted more.
We continued our walk and found a second retail winery that also offered wine tasting but it would cost $5 for six different types of wine. I was already feeling tipsy from our first wine tasting, so The Boy was the only one trying out the wines at this second location. However, this place poured half a glass of wine for each type (the other place was only an inch off the bottom of the glass), so I had to help The Boy taste his selection of wines. This place also offered crackers, so I was hoping that my munching on crackers would reduce the tipsiness in my head. I was later told the crackers were for cleansing the palate before tasting a new type of wine. Goes to show what I know about the art of wine tasting.
Needless to say, I was quite giddy after that experience. Continuing our walk, err...The Boy walking and me hanging onto to him because the road kept spinning...we found a store devoted to tobasco sauce. There were walls lined with hot sauce ranging from 1 to 10 (1 being mild and 10 being "pants on fire hot"). There were samples being offered. And so there were tastings being done by the both of us. Being the hard core spicy eater, I went straight for the 10 rated habanero sauce and I tell you it made me cry. But it was a good burn.
Cannery Row was fun and all, but there was a lesson learned: McDonald's for breakfast, wine tasting for afternoon snack, hot sauce tasting for another snack, plus a heavy dinner equals really bad heartburn for the rest of the night.
... ... ...
On the last day of our romantic getaway, we went to Carmel by the Sea because everyone who is in Monterey HAS to go to Carmel. Here's a tip: If you're under 40, skip Carmel. The shopping is geared for older folks and it's quite boring. The scenery was worthy of some photos, though.
Can someone tell me what language that is?
The Boy picked a flower off the tree and stuck it in my head. Isn't that sweet?
The picture above is a skeleton of some weird deep sea ocean dweller. I hope it looks more friendly when it has flesh and scales.
Can you find tell which end is the moray eel's head and which is its tail?
Can you find the flounder fish? ... ... ...
Sardines swimming so fast, I was spinning around in circles.
Yes, that thing in the picture above is a fish. It's a huge fish, probably five foot in length and three feet high. However, I forgot the name of it, and can't even find it. At first, I thought it was just a floating log. But then it came floating towards the glass and it had this tiny little mouth that only opened a couple of inches, big enough to eat krill and floating micro organisms. Cool huh?... ... ...
Overall, the Aquarium was informative and fun but still highly overrated. And it's definitely not worth the $25 per adult being charged. A tip for all those who wants to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium in the future: be smart (like me!) and buy the tickets at your hotel or online or whereever just as long as you don't stand in line at the aquarium for tickets. Trust me, you'll spend a good hour waiting in line just to get tickets.
