Monday, April 25, 2011

Monday at the Coast

I feel like I have eaten my way through Newport. I say that because I am typing this blog post out on my phone and it is currently 10:37pm and I have recently awoken from a Kobe beef-induced nap. I napped right up to bedtime and now I'm awake. Great. :o)



A storm at 6-ish this morning made for some pretty choppy whitecaps!

But let me start from the beginning...

This morning Jonathan and I lounged around for hours. I stayed snuggled in bed with a cup of delicious coffee and my Uppercase 8 magazine that I had not yet had a chance to read since school had kept me so busy around the time of receiving it. So it was nice to catch up! We finally made it out of the hotel and headed to Cafe Stefanie, our favorite little cafe in Newport. Their fish tacos and fish sandwiches are to die for!


Salmon tacos with homemade mango salsa. Oh, so good!!

We had passed a cute-looking little shop on the way to get food so it was nice to check it out afterward. I would have loved to own everything in this shop, called Coastal Breeze. The owner lady was super nice! It was housewares that were all up my alley and I wish I had more money to spend! I ended up getting a tablecloth in our team colors (green and blue) that had fish on it! Cutest tablecloth ever!




We headed to the aquarium and saw just how nice it was to visit it on a weekday! Hardly any screaming kids around and not even very many people there, period.

Here's a few pictures I took...



Rockfish buddy!



Anaconda!



(This little salmon buddy had NO fins! He still swam around perfectly fine, but I feel bad for the little guy!)



Wolf eel! Seeing these guys while scuba diving is pretty cool!



I hope you can see what is going on in this picture. The fish on the left had its mouth around the front fin of the fish on the right, but not in a mean way or like he was trying to hurt the other fish. They were just kinda floating in one spot, hanging out. Fish are weird, which is one reason why I love them.



I called this guy "King Prawn." He was king of his rock.



Tuffies!

Plus, a few videos for your enjoyment!

YouTube Video

The spider crabs are one of my absolute favorite things at the aquarium. I call them my nemesis. I had a run-in with one at the zoological museum in St Petersburg, Russia. They are cool, but so weird. (And creepy big.) The crab in this video is so obviously either zen or plotting something.


YouTube Video

The rhinoceros auklet in the back kept flipping himself over and fluttering his wings. They're so cute! They do it to get air in their down to help keep them warm.

There are two horseshoe crab videos that Jonathan took, but Blogger isn't letting me upload them from my phone so I'll have to post them from the computer at a later time.

Here are two pictures of me in the piranha tank! ;o)







After the aquarium we headed to the Rogue at the historic bayfront. We hadn't been to this location yet. It was awesome!



We both had the afore-mentioned Kobe beef burgers with local Rogue Creamery blue cheese and wasabi mayo. I washed mine down with one of Rogue's Mocha Porters. We decided to head back to the hotel after we ate because we were both sapped of energy.



Saw this cool painting near where we had parked.

We got back to the hotel at probably 6:30ish, I'm guessing, and just conked out on the bed for hours. I can't believe I slept so long! It's now 11:22pm and I just made some chamomile tea since I'm not feeling sleepy at all yet. I hope I'm able to get some good sleep tonight! I'm going to start getting ready for bed now and hope that sparks some sleepy thoughts. Wish me luck!

3 comments:

  1. wow what a day! I really like your stormy a.m. photo.

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  2. That crab is totally plotting something.

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  3. Oh man! More vacation synchronicity! I was so full from OUR dinner last night that I passed out when we got back to the hotel. Unfortunately, I didn't wake up until 1:45! Fortunately, I was only awake for 2.5 hours after that and did feel fully rested when I woke up this morning. :-)

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