The Santa Cruz Beach Inn

Finally left the noisy dorm room yay. Saw some massive waves along the coast towards Monterey. Stopped off in Santa Cruz, not much going on in Fall! Apparently it's wooden rollercoaster is a national monument! Got to Monterey and found a visitor centre for a map. Hotel man upgraded us to a deluxe king, had a microwave and a fridge! Watched lots of TV ...

... of the waves...(don't think it was Talon though).<br><br>05/11/2009 - After a lovely lie-in, we woke up to a gorgeous breakfast of berries and porridge. We headed back into town and found a 'secret walk' along a river. The houses along the path had private little gardens right on the rivers edge. It looked like such a lovely place to live. <br><br>After grabbing lunch at a cafe (Jim had a Philly cheese-steak and ...

... LOLA" <br>click.<br><br>Gathered from post-incident madness, Christa walks back into the restaurant and turns to Ryan "Come with me NOW". I think Ryan figured out what was going on, went back to the table and said to everyone "SOMEONES STEALING ALL OUR ****"...a nanosecond later the table about flips with the speed that all the guys rose. Out the door and full sprinnnt to the hill where Lola awaits...<br><br>Meanwhile, I'm still meeting with utter panic, the guys at the bottom of the ...

... playing with these little guys. It's pretty painful so I mainly watched this class rather than participating in it. I did like that she suggested minis were a form of crosstraining, a way to excite the brain and learn new ways of moving that can be applied to a bigger hoop.<br><br> After lunch I checked out Anah and Jamie's class, on slowing down the hoop and hoop fitness. Really enjoyed Anah's encouragement to breath while hooping. I do often rush, spinning from ...

... got some chinese food and a restaraunt called "The Golden Dragon"...go figure. The plates of food were bigger then my head, way tooo much food, but we did eat to full capacity...oh and as for the crazy homeless suit wearing man, yea we saw him talking to himself walking down the street. By the time we were done with our food it was already pretty late, it was time to be a scooting over to the farm. We said our goodbyes and thanked Chris for the fun few days...and we were outy.

... out of a top restaurant, we were all very impressed. Reed was the guy holding that BBQ and he had fairy lights strung all round his garden and had a fire pit in the back of his garden so they had a huge bonfire. There were dudes playing the guitar, s'mores being made (the american equivalent of toasting marshmallows, only better) and beers being drunk and it was just a really nice chilled out night.

... the way to San Jose (la, la, la, la, etc). Its south of San Francisco and we had a general idea where it was. Not sure TomTom had much of an idea. It took us north over the Oakland Bay Bridge. All of us had wanted to drive that and thought we would not have the chance. TomTom gave us the chance, but we sacked him pretty quickly afterwards, deciding to run on maps and gut feel. That got us there pretty quickly. Dad later said that he had found the alternate route TomTom was ...

... sadly) 1 pair underwear 1 pair heavy trekking socks 1 bra 1 tank top 1 long-sleeved t-shirt 1 medium weight zip fleece 1 gortex rain jacket 1 pair old leather hiking boots (tossed after Inca Trail) 1 wrist watch 1 money belt with cash, travelers checks, passport etc Prescription glasses Small hoop earrings Carry on (small messenger bag): Ecuador LP guidebook and torn out Footprint Ecuador pages (toss in November) LP Latin American Spanish phrasebook (totally useless-next time ...

... tour San Francisco Walking Tours Attractions Historic Cable Car ride (one-way ticket) California Academy of Sciences - Steinhart Aquarium Exploratorium Six Flags Marine World Six Flags Waterworld-Concord Bay City Bike Rentals Haas Lilienthal House Conservatory of Flowers Golden Gate Park Carousel SF Botanical Gardens at Strybing Arboretum SS Jeremiah O'Brien USS Hornet Yerba Buena center for Arts Zeum at ...

... in the films (e.g. Thelma and Louise and How the West was Won). We stopped for pictures along Highway 163 before entering the tribal park for a close up look at the 'buttes' and 'mesas' on the self guided 17 mile loop road. The road was unpaved and we made several stops to admire the views so it took us a while to make it round. The scenery was certainly impressive - some geomorphological classics! Artists View was amongst our favourite viewpoints. We decided it was too ...