The Phallic Road Trip

Missed breakfast again this morning — these hotels make ’em too early.

We’re in Monterey today; going to wander around the bay here before making our way to Carmel tonight.

We left Mountain View yesterday morning, and after a lunch stop at Sizzler — per Justin’s request — we made our way down to Santa Cruz, about 35 miles away.

It was the perfect beach day and the weekend crowd was there in full force. We didn’t settle into a parking space and get to the boardwalk until about 2.

Since we have the whole week to enjoy the beach, we tried to keep ourselves out of the sun some yesterday, not to burn and to avoid the crowds.

Aside from its beaches, Santa Cruz particularly prides itself on its vibrant boardwalk, so we spent most of the afternoon there. For almost a full two hours, we screwed around in this big arcade, acting like kids who could play as many games as we wanted — from pinball and skee-ball, to cheesy games geared towards getting tickets. We all walked away winning a couple of shot glasses.

Afterwards, we wandered down the boardwalk, stopping off to play a few carnival games and ride the Giant Dipper, a rollercoaster built in 1924 that was really fun. As for old wooden rollercoasters though, I still think the Cyclone at Coney Island is more intense.

It was cool just hanging out on the boardwalk, which has been there since 1907.

Around 5, we walked towards the quaint, more yuppie downtown area to find dinner and catch the Cubs/White Sox game. We ended up at a place called 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, which actually had 99 beers to choose from.

After a quick stop at Coldstone, we headed back to our car and made our way to Monterey, getting here at around 9:30. We had considered staying in Santa Cruz, but found that it was about half the price to stay in Monterey, about 45 miles down the coast.

The guidebook recommends a good sandwich place that we might try for lunch, as well as a few attractions, so we’ll see what we want to do. If we settle in Carmel tonight, we can spend Tuesday driving through Big Sur.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Background. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.