Hello, this is blog post 16!

Three day’s was enough in the crazy city of San Francisco and after dragging all our luggage up a steep hill and round the corner to the parking Garage both Greg and I were surprised to say we were very happy to see the Camry! Having time to burn, Greg said I could do some more shopping this morning, (I know, best husband ever right) in our search for another Macy’s (they were having a sale) we drove past a T.J Max. I have heard great things and asked Greg to stop here. T.J Max is awesome guys! Designer brands for a lot cheaper or normal things for heaps cheap, I could have spent hours in there! I bought two pairs of awesome tights for the gym, keeping it quick not wanting Greg to get too bored!

We did have the intention of getting breakfast on our way, but Greg is not a big breakfast man and all my body’s needs go out the window if I’m shopping haha! So it was now about 11am, we pushed on to a big shopping centre with Macy’s, H&M, Forever 21 (you get the idea heaps of places to shop!) and stopped for lunch at ChinaMax sharing a plate of fried rice, Orange chicken and some kind of steak, so yum and under $10 for the two of us! I had a quick look through Macy’s but Greg was about done with the shopping thing so we decided to push on to Santa Cruz.

It was awesome to drive near the beach the whole way, but up here it seems every morning starts with fog, not starting to clear until at least 11 (this would annoy me greatly if I lived here!). The coolest part was seeing farms here, a field of something growing with an ocean view crazy cool! Also nothing like cool lighthouses on the coastline (Greg said this is the one from the movie Need for Speed where he gets arrested).

Heading into Santa Cruz, the weather had finally cleared up and it was a nice day. The wind though… It blows right through you, we are so not used to having to wear jumpers at the beach in SUMMER!

Getting to our hotel with a great view of the pier we decided to check in since it was after 3pm, they told us the room wasn’t quite ready and to come back in an hour or so, this was okay as we were in no rush and the plan was to walk the pier anyway heading up the pier we stopped to watch a guy creating a massive shark in the sand, what talent and patience he has and it looked fantastic! Pushing on we walked through the many shops and looked out at the great view they have here, on the horizon the fog just waiting to come back in, always! They have seals that flock here to get up on the beams under the pier and sleep too, such cool animals. We decided that we would head back when it was dark and spend our night here with fish and chips for dinner. Now about 4pm we headed back to check into our hotel to get our bags out of the hot car and have a rest before exploring the them park on the Board walk. Getting back our room was still not ready telling us to come back in another hour, how ridiculous! I was quite annoyed and it took some convincing from Greg that it did not matter and to just enjoy our time walking the theme park, we were on the search for chocolate bacon and Greg was desperate to try it! We walked the crowded and pack theme park, not coming across it anywhere! It was great to check out the 100 year old Merry-go-Round and the old wooden roller-coaster, kept in very good nick! It was 4.45 and we decided to head back to the hotel (surely our room would be ready now!) as Greg wanted to use the Wi-Fi and find out where to get the famous chocolate bacon. Getting our keys and heading down to our room, we had to sit in the patio and wait as it still wasn’t ready! What a joke!!! check ins are pretty late and ridiculous over here. It was after five when we finally got into the room. Chilling out for awhile Greg found the shop that sells the bacon, we were ready to head out for sunset photo’s over the theme park anyway and went in search again. Finally finding it, Greg deemed it too expensive $16.99 a box or $8 for a ¼ pound! (I’m not paying 8 bucks for 5 cents worth of bacon he said) I knew he was disappointed we headed up to a view point for the pier and set up for photo’s ( I enjoyed a chocolate dipped soft serve ice cream on the way). It was nice sitting up here for the photo’ (except for all the sketchy’s and still that icy wind). Once it was dark we headed to the pier for night time photo’s of the theme park with all the lights and to enjoy our fish and chips, the fish was very nice, fresh and tasty! Greg had also talked about wanting a Toffee apple, and there was a shop on the pier that sold them, I walked down to get one for us to share and found Chocolate bacon a lot cheaper here I got one piece (still cost $3!) but I knew how much Greg wanted to try it! Grabbing a plain Caramel apple (as that’s what they are here and there were no exciting m&m covered apples) I ran back to Greg on the pier so proud of myself and excited for Greg to have his chocolate bacon! It did not taste disgusting like I expected, it didn’t taste much like bacon at all, more just like chocolate! It was exciting all the same and what a lovely evening we had together.

Thanks for reading!

N&G