My Trip to California — Santa Cruz, Monterey, and the Bay Area

We spent a week on the west coast in July. Santa Cruz is like a second home and even though I go there fairly often to visit family and friends, it never seems to work out for the four of us to go together. The last time the kids had been there was when they were 4 years old and they did not remember it at all. It was so fun to show them all the beautiful places I know and love.

IN SANTA CRUZ we rented a very rundown Airbnb which was so bad it was comical. The weather was foggy and cold the first couple days. Classic Santa Cruz summer. We did love the lemon trees though and made so much lemonade. When life gives you lemons… We went to so many good food joints. Verve Coffee, Tacos Morenos, Zoccoli’s. We hiked and we biked, in forests of eucalyptus, and along West Cliff drive. We went to the beach in front of the Dream Inn, the only day it was really warm and sunny. We did the Boardwalk one night and the kids got to ride the Giant Dipper, the oldest wooden roller coaster in the world. We had dinner on the wharf with my mom where we saw sea lions. We shopped in countless vintage clothing stores and surf shops. My friend Joan works at Pacific Trading Co. and I was treated to a personal shopping experience there with my own rail of clothes to try on. I wanted it all but ended up just buying one amazing pair of Mother jeans.

IN MONTEREY we ate at a Mexican place with and outdoor patio and then went to the Aquarium. That took up a whole day.

IN THE BAY AREA we went all over. We drove up the coast at the end of our trip and stopped in Pescadero, ate at the Arcangeli Grocery Co., then Half Moon Bay, then continued up highway 1 to SF. We saw the sights in San Francisco like North Beach pizza, Coit tower, Fisherman’s Wharf. No cable car rides sadly but drove up and down lots of steep hills. We visited my cousins in Oakland and explored the area, stopping at the epic Homeroom Mac & Cheese and then to the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda where you can play hundreds of games from every era. We detoured up through Berkeley, checked out the campus and stopped in a cool coffee shop.

We had such a good time. There was some serious roughing it, a couple nights with all of us in one room, and a brutal red-eye flight on the way home. But in the end we loved the experience of being in California together as a family.