monterey.

hello again!

this morning, i got all bajillion of my pictures from the weekend whittled down to a few that i thought would be fun to share, so here they are! :)

as an early birthday present to weston, i planned a john steinbeck (weston's favorite author) inspired trip up to the monterey area this past weekend. we left early on saturday morning and drove until mid-afternoon when we arrived in salinas to visit the national steinbeck center and the steinbeck house.

the drive to monterey from salinas was beautiful and we got to our hotel just before sunset. after dinner at a greek restaurant downtown, we explored the area for a while (sans camera, as you might be able to tell by the lack of photos) before it started to rain.

i slept with my fingers crossed, in hopes that the next day would bring sunshine and tadaaaa! it was bright and beautiful! sunday started off with pancakes at an organic cafe (obviously weston's call) and then we headed over to the monterey bay aquarium. 

 and of course we all knew i would say this, because i'm such a nerd about these things...

but the aquarium was amazing!! especially the jellies!!

 i think we ended up spending about 4 hours inside the aquarium, enjoying everything that there was to see! at first, i had been a tiny bit apprehensive about spending so much money on tickets (they're like $30 a pop!) but afterwards we agreed that it was definitely worth it. super fun!

when you exit the aquarium you get plopped right out onto cannery row, so we walked up and down the street, grabbed an early dinner, and tried our best to avoid the shade, and stay in the gorgeous sunshine.

the rest of the day was spent exploring cool places that we had heard about, but my favorite place was one that i noticed as we were driving right past it. after i excitedly (and accidentally loudly) blurted out 'oh my gosh, can we pull over and hang out here?!' we got out and walked along flowery grass to a wooden bench with a beautiful view.

and life just felt pretty much perfect right about then.

i am a big supporter of weekend getaways.

short, little road trips to pretty places with people you love.

doesn't get much better than that.