Tourist around the World: California

As promised, once a week I would leave my dear Romania and talk about another beautiful part of the world. Today is about California.

Why California?

I've been there some time ago and it was an amazing experience. This was my second visit in US (first was living there for 4 months, near Yellowstone; about that, in another post).
It was a working visit so we were guided by colleagues working in San Jose and San Francisco. It was more a "we need to check this" visit than a slow self discovery journey.
The focus was on San Jose, San Francisco and Monterey.

San Jose and San Francisco

It was the worst flight I ever had. Choosing a 2 stops flight was not a smart thing to do. I left Romania in the morning and reached San Francisco 26 hours later, after a big delay and a forced stop in Las Vegas (we were not allowed to leave the plane so no fun here).
Our hotel room was given to someone else as we were late and they could not contact us (guess why :D).

But, starting the next day, things got better and better.
First surprise was the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, quite a good one, I recommend.

San Francisco was the place where I chased the sun and, as you saw in the first picture, I've managed to get my sunset. Another funny story here. It was quite cold (April) and windy. I knew exactly at what time the sun will set and I decided to go to the beach 45 minutes before to get all of it. It was cloudy and even colder than in the city. I walked around continuously to get warm but refused to leave until the time of the sunset will pass. 10 minutes before, we saw the first trace of it. And it was amazing, more than I ever expected.

Monterey

Everyone told me that I will see whales here. I was skeptical, from my not so good zoo knowledge whales won't come near the shore. Only if they are very sick.
But I saw the cutest seals ever. They were so playful and happy, being free and enjoying the sun.

Of course, here I got my sunrise.

One of the most interesting experiences here was to make burned marshmallows and eat them with chocolate and biscuits, yammy. I do not have a picture with the final product as it didn't resist enough for that, just with the initial preparation.

There are a bunch of other things to say about California, I did not even mentioned the well known Golden Gate. In my mind and soul this were the things to remember first.
Comments with more to do and visit in the area are more than welcomed.
Hope you enjoyed it, see you tomorrow, back in Romania.