With the weather seriously heating up we decided to get away from Fresno for a weekend and go to the coast. We thought Santa Cruz was a good place to start because it was only a 3 hour drive or so. Renting cars is definitely one of the best ways to get around and if you fill the car it's actually really cheap!When we arrived we made our way to the Santa Cruz Beachboard Walk. It's a long stretch of beach with classic rides and attractions, volleyball nets, and spots to just relax and sunbath. Being a weekend the place was packed, it took us probably almost an hour just to find a place to park! We spent the day swimming, sunbathing and checking out some of the surf shops.
We hadn't booked a motel or anything to stay in that night but got lucky and found a pretty decent one. It was only about a 10 minute walk from the downtown area and only $16 each for four people to share a room. After a quick shower we went out to get something to eat in a chinese across the road.
Now, being 19 and coming from the Uk where the drinking age is 18, to suddenly living in America where you have to be 21 is just a huge pain in the ass! All I wanted was a nice glass of wine (or two) with my meal. For gods sake in the UK if you're in a restaurant you only have to be 16 to drink as long as it's with a meal!
So the waitress came over to take our drinks order. My friend is 22 so she asked for a bottle of wine.
"How many glasses?" The waitress asked.
"Em..... just one," my friend replied.
"You going to drink the whole bottle to yourself?"
"Em..... yes."
I think the fact that my friend is Swedish and has an accent probably helped. The waitress probably just thought she couldn't understand her.
So the bottle came, one of my friends asked for a glass too, which he gave to me, and I spent the rest of the meal sneaking gulps of wine, replacing my glass back infront of my friend...... I felt like I was about 16. So what I learnt from that is, if you're under 21 don't go to America without a fake id!
After the meal we hit downtown Santa Cruz. It's actually quite pretty with neat sidewalks and some trees lining the street. As far as nightlife goes it's not the must exciting, there seemed to just be one club and maybe about five or so bars. I'm sure there's more if you know where to go. The club said they were full and wouldn't let us in at all, to be honest it looked a bit too grungy/heavy metalish. We tried a few bars but the bouncers seemed pretty strict on id and two of us were underage. Eventually we started chatting to this one bouncer, as soon as he heard our accents he seemed more interested in where we were from than what the date on our ids said. Eventually he said: "You coming in or what?" My English friend hesitantly handed him his id. "I didn't see nothing!" the bouncer whispered. The bar wasn't bad at all and the bartender was willing to barter with us over the price of his tequila shots.... we won.
The next day we wanted to find a more relaxing beach with less people where we could maybe try surfing a little. We first went to Capitola which looked really good for surfing but we couldn't find much of a sandy beach. I'm not even sure if we were looking in the right place but anyway, we decided to drive further along the coast. It wasn't long before we came across what we were looking for. I'm not sure what the beach is called but it had a long stretch of soft sand and nice waves crashing in, not too big for beginner surfers.
We spent the whole day just sunbathing, swimming and surfing (well, trying too). It's probably one of the best days I've had in California so far, sometimes it's best to just chill out and do nothing. That evening the last thing I wanted to do was drive back to Fresno, but I had classes the next day and it was only the beginning of term, didn't want to start off bad habits so early on.
I really want to travel further and check out Carmel and Pismo Beach. Hopefully some time soon.
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