Santa Cruz

Well, Santa Cruz in November is dead!! We went down to the beach and the Boardwalk, but we were the only ones there a part from the guys destructing a platform. Hell, even parking was free and apparently that's exceptional!! The attractions park was sort of ghost-like and it looked like something horrible had happened there that scared people away...
The beach being empty is not necessarily a bad thing – I personally hate yelling kids running around kicking sand on my stuff – so we went down to try out the water and it was absolutely freezing!!!!!! We stayed brave long enough to take some pictures, but we pitied the surfers on the other side of the wharf...
BTW at the wharf we went to check on the sea lions playing in the water and sleeping on the pillars. It was funny watching them, but I was afraid of the huge amount of sea gulls and pelicans flying over us constantly – you never know when they drop the load...
Driving over to the lighthouse we saw all these cute houses and a lot of them were actually B&Bs!! Had we known (and gotten there in daylight), we would probably have stayed in one of them. Out at the lighthouse there were around 30 surfers paddling in the freezing water and some of them kids!! There was this little guy, I guess he was around 12, and he was just awesome!!! He surfed those waves like he'd never done anything else!! He'd probably be a pro some day...
But apparently that part of coast has had its share of casualties – there was a shrine with the names of tens of people...

Feeling we had seen what we wanted in Santa Cruz, we grabbed some sandwiches and took off down the coast. We got to Monterey peninsula and thought we'd eat and stopped at Pacific Grove. Finally, we didn't eat all that much because we met these cute animals – they looked like squirrels, but probably weren't because they dug holes in the ground... Finally they ate most of our food and attracted the huge sea gulls, on of which snapped the sandwich out of my hand!!! I'd had it, so we drove on around the peninsula to what must be the world's most beautiful golf courses!! Fabulous view and picturesque scenery... the houses were huge and stunning, but they must have a rough time with the weather – it wasn't raining, but the wind, sand and waves probably just polish everything.. A lot of painters were standing along the road to catch the beautiful sight.
We drove through the National Park (or whatever it was) all through to Carmel by the Sea, a posh village in the forest of villas and estates... The weather was cloudy, so the pictures look better in black and white...

Arriving on the Coastal again, we had originally planned to go to Cambria fro the night and visit Hearst Castle early the next morning, but we changed our mind, because we decided that one man's madness inspired by Europe of all things, wasn't important enough to delay our arrival in San Diego!! God, there's enough over the top estates back home on the French Riviera! Sooooo... we drove on and entered Big Sur: beautiful forests, mountains and sea view – very weird to see all of that together; a bit scary, actually... and when the GPS died on us and it was pitch dark, we kinda got “Deliverance” vibes... It's incredible how dark it gets when you are far from everything!! And how about securing the road?!! You could easily drive off the steep cliffs because nothing would hold you back – that would NOT have been possible in Europe.. Just too bad we didn't see much in the dark... but it would have been cloudy anyways, but luckily the temperature rose quite a bit, so we drove with the hood down for a long time – nice!!

I fought off sleep for as long as I could (I can normally only sleep if my dad's driving), but I nodded off a couple of times before we got to Santa Barbara where we had planned to eat. Finally, we ended up in Ventura at McDonald's. I tried a 3 pounder Angus burger and it tastes nothing like any McDonald's burger you would get in France!!! I got the mushrooms and Swiss version and it was actually really good! A bit heavy on the mayo, but hey, nobody's perfect!! And, after all this time: a chocolate milk shake!! Why does that not exist in France??!!!

3 hours later we arrived in San Diego, praying that a hotel in La Jolla would be open for customers. I did have to wake the guy up, but he got us a big room quickly and we collapsed almost immediately (except for me having to up-date this blog...)