This weeks PhotoFriday theme is “Growth.” Here is my entry.
Every spring, nature puts on a big spurt of growth. This was taken earlier this year in Berkeley, California.
This weeks PhotoFriday theme is “Addiction.” The above image was taken after a cigar making demonstration in Trinidad, Cuba.
Please also vote for my entry in last weeks contest. I’m entry number 333.
I don’t normally split a single trip into several pages since it annoys me on other sites where you have to keep clicking “Next” just to get the complete story, however I was impressed enough with the Monterey Bay Aquarium that I thought it deserved separating out. There is another page for the commentary and pictures from Berkeley, Point Lobos and Carmel.
One of the main focal points in the aquarium is the Kelp Forest, a large tank with kelp and a diverse range of fish swimming around. Of course, as a long-time user of Linux I’m always impressed by penguins, and who wouldn’t love a playful sea otter?
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Most of the penguins were stood still but one was busy. It would carefully select a pebble, passing over most of the easily reached ones for that perfect stone. Picking it up in its beak, it would waddle over to a little cave, drop it in there and start over the whole process. Quite why I have no idea. The other penguins seemed either to be just as bemused or maybe just indifferent.
I was most impressed with the jellyfish. I had no idea that they were so diverse and beautiful. It was all helped by the nicely contrasting lighting.
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The bad news is that it was very dark and most of my pictures came out blurry, dark or both. I guess that just means you’ll have to go see it yourself!
Not since my trip to three countries in one weekend have so many people questioned my sanity. This time only one country was involved, but so was a ten hour flight and an eight hour time difference.
Despite the logistics it was a great time to go to California as spring starts much earlier there than here in London. It’s nice to be able to walk around in T-shirts in the middle of February.
We stayed in Berkeley. Previously the only thing I knew about it was that the university was home of the Berkeley Standard Distribution of Unix. Until last year I didn’t, for example, know of its proximity to San Francisco, or that you could see the Golden Gate Bridge if you go up a particularly steep hill.
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After we’d (more or less) recovered from the flight over we headed south to Monterey, which is where we’d spend the Saturday night. But we had other places to visit before we called it a day.
Carmel, in the UK at least, is most famous for being the town where Clint Eastwood was mayor. We didn’t see him, but we did see a building that was either owned by or simply dedicated to him. We wandered up and down the main street, peering into the various tourist-oriented shops and some expensive-looking designer outlets. We failed to buy anything more expensive than a coffee and a cake.
The reason we had so little time was a detour to Point Lobos. It’s a beautiful spot on the coast where the Pacific crashes powerfully into the beige coloured rocks. There’s a tradition of taking family pictures here and we were keen to add another to the collection.
Carmel was surprisingly busy and we were pleased with ourselves for booking a restaurant. Back at the hotel in Monterey we slept and then spent some of the morning peering out at the water trying to locate seals and sea-otters. (Partially successfully!)
Fortunately we didn’t have to rely on luck for closer sightings of nature as we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Before heading back to Berkeley we had a look around the Carmel Mission. We had mistakenly thought is was this building in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, but despite missing the movie references still found it to be an interesting spot.
On Monday we just hung around the East Bay. I wandered up to the main street in Berkeley, enjoying the sun and picking up a Peets coffee.
So am I crazy? I don’t think so. It was a long way to go for a weekend, but it was fun and it was great to have a brief reprieve from the grey, London weather.
This weeks PhotoFriday theme is Thin. My entry is number 318, and is of one of the cables supporting the Golden Gate Bridge in the San Francisco Bay area. From a distance they look far too thin to support such a large structure.
