Moving right along...

Solvang to Monterey and Monterey to San Francisco...

Hearst Castle - I'm of two minds about this place... It is an amazing place but I wonder if the European buildings from which the ceilings etc came from still needed them... I get a sense that huge amounts of money had allowed him to pillage the art works from the less wealthy.
The tours are also on the brief side. Of the 165 rooms, we got to see 3. Yes they were amazingly constructed and decorated but we got no sense of the scale of everything, you need to do a couple of the tours to see how it all fits together.

From Hearst Castle, we headed up the coast with a red sunset over the pacific on our left. Emma was feeling a little queasy so Cathy and I took turns in the back so Emma could have the front seat.

The biggest attraction in Monterey is the aquarium. Once again Zak got to see his current favourite marine mammal, the sea otter and see many other creatures. My favourite bit was the feeding in their "Open Sea" aquarium. All kinds of fish zipping about. Especially cool was the school of sardines, swishing through the tank, with one or two of the bigger fish occasionally taking a pass through the school hoping for a live snack.
We zipped through a bunch of souvenir shops but got stuck at the Ghiradelli Chocolate shop for Sundaes and Hot Chocolates...

That was almost it for Monterey. Before leaving the next morning we visited a Monarch butterfly colony but it was a bit cool for them - they stayed in the trees unmoving - so we headed to Mountain View to go to the Computer History museum. My first ever computer was right beside the Apple I !!! See! It is historically important! No way I can throw it out!!! Lots more I could say about the museum but I'll leave that for another time.

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