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UNITED STATES | Monterey, California Travel Guide
Friday, May 3, 2024
Cannery Row and the Monterey Bay Aquarium
Cannery Row
Cannery Row is Monterey’s most famous street. It runs about a mile along Monterey Bay, at the northwest corner of the city, from the Coast Guard Station in the east to the edge of neighboring Pacific Grove. This is in fact the Cannery Row of John Steinbeck fame, romanticized in his classic of the same name as " “a poem, a stink, a grating noise.” " Starting at the turn of the century, several sardine canning factories located along this row, peaking to over sixteen in the 1930s; and scores of bawdy, raucous fishermen, eccentrics, and other interesting characters were drawn here as well, many of whom Steinbeck encountered during his visit to the row, and who later became the inspiration for his novels Tortilla Flats (1935), Cannery Row (1945) and Sweet Thursday (1945). Most of the canneries closed in the late 1940s, and in the following years fell into disrepair or disappeared from the scene altogether.
But that was then. Cannery Row is now a revitalized, bustling strip of colorful shops, restaurants, galleries and touristy mini malls, most of them housed in the converted and remodeled old canneries. The Cannery Row Trading Company building, for instance, now houses shops, restaurants and a gallery; the Enterprise Cannery houses a gallery, a furniture showroom, and offices; the Aenas Sardine Products Building, dating from 1944 and featuring an overpass, has in it an antique store; the Bear Flag Building, dating from 1929 and once used as a brothel, now houses a series of shops, offices, eating establishments, and a gallery; the Del Mar Canning Company is now home to a restaurant; and the Monterey Canning Company building, one of the only cannery buildings with its original overpass, houses an assortment of shops, galleries and restaurants, wine tasting rooms, and the Spirit of Monterey Wax Museum, where there are more than 100 lifesize wax figures, many of them models of Steinbeck’s characters, including the marine biologist “Doc” Ricketts, the most famous of all, and Lee Chong, Sam Mally and Dora Flood.
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Also of interest on Cannery Row, located at the west end of the street at the site of the old Hovden Cannery, is the Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of Monterey’s foremost tourist attractions. The aquarium is one of the largest of its kind in the nation: more than 320,000 square feet, with over 6,500 sea creatures, representing some 525 species of fish, mammals, invertebrates, birds and plants, all native to Monterey Bay. Among the aquarium’s chief exhibits are its 335,000-gallon living kelp forest that rises three stories— 28 feet—believed to be the tallest aquarium exhibit in the world; and the Outer Bay galleries, where you can view a million-gallon indoor ocean through the world’s largest window and marvel at the vast exhibits of delicate jellies. Another, a 90-foot-long, 335,000-gallon exhibit recreates the deep reefs and sandy sea floors of the bay, with sharks of all sizes, bat rays and several other open-ocean fish. There is also a two-level sea otter exhibit here, and several petting pools, an aquaculture laboratory, and countless marine exhibits.
Last updated November 16, 2010
Posted in United States | Monterey
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