Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Wow what a difference! After the big cities it's kinda weird being in a place that is seen in half a day!! But it's actually very nice to also be able to walk along a street without a hoard of people around you!!
Arriving in Santa Cruz, via our luxury Greyhound bus (about time!!) which included soft leather seats AND free WiFi, but more importantly no major weirdos, we just had to walk just 20 mins to our hotel (again about time!!)!!
Our hotel, or should we say motel, like most places we have stayed could do with a little bit of a facelift but as long as there are no bed bugs we're happy!!
The owner greeted us with a mouthful of curry and asked us to wait five minutes while he finished his lunch! Not a problem though for us English travellers, we were a little early for check in after all, and so we wait patiently in the reception.
Five minutes later the owner returns to kindly check us in! We think his deep curry burps were a sign that he enjoyed his lunch! However, we're not quite sure how much his wife enjoyed the curry when all we could hear from their back room was her hocking up!
So, as per the norm Mr Patel takes our passports to check as ID, and is all of a sudden overly excited!! Apparently he loves UK passports, and we are very lucky to have been born in the UK!!
A quick photocopy of our passports (oh s***!! That's our identity stolen!!) and we get our room key!
Read the fourth review if you want to see if you would like to stay:- http://www.yelp.com/biz/paradise-inn-santa-cruz
Starving, we decided to head to the boardwalk and the pier only a block away, and have a superbly delicious meal, but probably more than we should have spent!! But made up for it for buying two bottles of 2 buck wines from Trader Joes to enjoy back in the room!! And that's when the storm rolls in . . . !! So bloody much for following the sun!! The west coast of California seems to be experiencing some colder than normal weather! Great!!
Tuesday brings a drizzly morning, so with coats on we head into downtown! (So far, the only downtown that you feel safe to wander into!!) Downtown Santa Cruz is about four blocks long with mainly restaurants, coffee shops, and music stores with the old hippy emporium thrown in! And after a nice English Breakfast tea to warm us up we head for lunch and dinner supplies before heading back! Not being entirely sure as to whether our room had any glasses in it we decided to treat ourselves to some new wine glasses in the shape of two Elmo plastic cups!!! Classy!!
We have totally become addicted to playing scrabble on our iPods against each other, and stupidly introduced the game to Sasha's sister and Mum and so stayed up until 1:30am trying to create words out of various 7 letters!!
Before that however, our male neighbouring hotel resident, who arrived alone received some female company for a few minutes!! It seems as though the earth moved for them, as our bed certainly moved at the same time!!! Strangely however it seems she left the room shortly after . . .
Wednesday meant that we had to stock up for Thursday, as Thursday is Thanksgiving!! So after a delicious lunch of curry in a naan at the farmers market we head to Trader Joes for our feast buying!!! As well as the pharmacy for our wine!! WTF is that all about??? Pain relief, cough medicine, athlete foot cream and oh yes, a litre and a half of wine please!!. . . . But OMG it is so cheap!!
Thursday being Thanksgiving we were a little unsure of how you are supposed to celebrate and so we decided to be as lazy as possible and snooze until close to midday!! And then headed to Starbucks for a cup of tea and a walk back along the pier to see the sea-lions chilling out in the sun!!
Off we head back to our hotel for microwave lasagne and salad only to find that our salad has completely frozen in the fridge!! That will be just half a lasagne each for our feast of a meal then!?
Tomorrow we head for Monterey for three nights then onto Santa Maria and Santa Barbara and then possibly onto Anaheim for a bit of a working holiday for Ollie!! Who will hopefully be meeting up with some geeks that would like to buy a game that he helped make!!
- comments
Tony Haven't heard back from my dad yet on the vodka challenge... ;0)
Dee I love reading these - you could earn some £££ when you've finished by writing a book of your encounters! As for the scrabble I love it too - however the time zones are a bit of a pain as its taken 3 days so far and we've still not completed a game! Carry on having fun and travel safe. Love you both lots. xxxx
Uncle George Hark at YOU two with your "one block away" and your "two blocks down" Get back to your English streets for goodenss sake befoer it gets a hold of you and you can't get out of the habit!