Monterey was home to California’s sardine fishing industry, immortalised in John Steinbeck’s novel, Cannery Row. The current Cannery Row and Fisherman’s Wharf are tacky tourist traps, but the Monterey Bay Aquarium is incredible, and that is what kept us in Monterey Sunday morning.

The Aquarium has a tank where you can watch sea otters above and below water. It was fascinating to see how like sea lions or seals the otters are. Their back legs are flippers, like those of a seal, not legs like a freshwater otter. On land they haul themselves along on their front legs, just like a seal. The faces may look like the European otter, but they are a very different animal.

The whole place was fascinating, but by early afternoon it was time to get going again.
We reached San Francisco early in the evening and found the ‘motel quarter’ on Highway 101, in an area called ‘Cow Hollow’. We pulled into the first decent-looking place and got a room for about $50 for the night. Clean, simple, just what we needed, and pretty central.