We visited Monterey on lots of occasions and took all of our friends and family to see the place when they came to visit ... it never failed to impress.

There were three attractions worthy of note at Monterey that really appealed to us; the aquarium, whale watching boat trips, and scuba diving.

Monterey Bay Aquarium is probably the best aquarium in the world, as far as we can tell. To hold such a status, you might expect it to be filled with the most diverse array of multi-coloured, worldly sealife known to man, but that's where it is even more impressive ... it's all sourced from the local bay and its one mile plus deep canyon.

We made a couple of trips out on the boats to see the migrating whales. There's a lot of bouncing about on the waves, waiting for signs of blowhole spray, chasing after them, predicting where they will surface next etc. But when the do come up right next to the boat, it makes the slightly nauseous journey all worthwhile.

Monterey Bay is also an interesting place to scuba dive, famed for its huge underwater kelp forests. The water is icy cold so we ended up doing our PADI Dry Suit certification here to get suitably kitted out.