I already shared a bunch of the photos from our recent vacation to San Francisco, but we also spent the last day and a half of our trip further down the peninsula. On Friday afternoon after enjoying lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf and dessert at Ghirardelli Square, we retrieved our rental car from the hotel and headed south towards Monterey. Along the way, we stopped at Stanford — my grad school alma mater! — just long enough to walk through the quad and pick up a couple new shirts from the bookstore.
Stanford is just a ridiculously beautiful college campus. I graduated in 2002, and had been back once in 2005…but another decade has now passed and walking around the quad honestly felt a bit surreal. I was only there for 9 months which in retrospect is SUCH a short time. (I’m still not sure how I managed to escape with an entire degree in less than a year. You can’t have it back, Stanford!)
Stanford has a ton of Rodin sculptures, including The Burghers of Calais.
From Stanford, we continued down to Monterey and spent two nights at the Martine Inn. The only thing we did on Saturday (besides a lot more relaxing) was check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It was pretty cool, although very crowded.
It’s hard to take pictures at aquariums where fish are 1) swimming, often quickly and 2) in dim rooms and tanks — so I don’t have a ton to share. The aquarium was definitely cool though, and worth the visit. My favorite exhibit may have been the jellyfish, which actually are pretty easy to photograph since they just float there!
All in all, our trip to California was a lot of fun and a great way to relax before the whirlwind of baby #2 hits us…in only ~6 more weeks!
It looks like Stanford is a beautiful campus! 9 months for a degree? Awesome!
Yes, 9 short months! It was a coursework-only master’s degree, so no thesis or research required, and I took a heavy class load each of my 3 quarters to do it.