The West Coast

It rained on two of our days spent on the coast. 

Pull off, snap a picture, hop back in car. 

 Driving through Santa Cruz

I will now dream of coming back to this spot on a hot summer day.

 Continuing on

We did see just gorgeous scenery

Highway 1

They gave us a Volvo
Nate wasn't a big fan. 

 We had to turn around after Big Sur due to mudslides closing the road. Lots of back tracking. 

 We pressed on to Los Angeles, arriving after dark.
We stopped at a scary restaurant. Huge place with 3 employees and 2 or three customers. I should probably let a Yelp review.

 We were so surprised to have a gorgeous day. No rain, only sunshine!
I couldn't get over it.

 Skyspace. It had a glass sliding board on the outside of the building that I was too scared to try and Nate decided that was a good call since it was so short. 

 We did enjoy the view

 The Sqirl

I was here for the french toast and looking over the menu I saw right away that Nate was going to be in trouble again. I recommended to him the french toast or whole grain pancakes which looked amazing. No, he went for the chicken salad even though the only recognizable thing on that description was chicken.

I had a bite and it was so good. I was actually just dreaming of this salad this morning. Sitting in the sunshine was dreamy. I had a perfect latte and he a grapefruit juice.

Fresh shop for a fresh new year! Brass plant stands are really making things shine in the best way possible ✨

A photo posted by Shout & About (@shout.and.about) on Jan 3, 2017 at 3:44pm PST

photo from Instagram

 I went to the most adorable tiny shop filled with things that I just loved. Shout and About

I could not stop looking. There were the most precious letter pressed cards for $5 a pop. Notebooks, plants, candles, cute little baby stuff that I would not even allow myself to look at. Ah I was so smitten. Nate stayed in the Volvo. This works well for us. I found this shop by stalking someone's Instagram. There are so many resources!

 Santa Monica

 I got a little paranoid that I might forget to "touch the Pacific Ocean" Nate wasn't concerned as he had gotten splashed at the Golden Gate Bridge. So I was on Nate's case to not let me forget.

I took this picture because Nate said, "Picture an old man on a park bench" when we walked past.

 I didn't even have the kids along, not sure what I was thinking here but... forgot to watch the waves.

There was a walk of shame back to the Volvo.

 We hit the road again, San Diego was calling.

This is where I didn't take many pictures. We got to our motel. Walked to an awesome Mexican joint.  La Puerta. I'm so glad that we did well here as we were hoping to walk into Mexico at some point but with the rain that never happened.
 We were in the gas-lamp district. So there were lots of shops around. Stopped for ice cream. 

The next morning was the Inauguration so we watched a lot of that and it rained all day. Like they were calling for possible tornadoes. 

The Donut Bar has rave reviews but we were not impressed. 

Again this might be because we are from Amish Country.

We did public transit here. Went to Italian Village and got pizza. Nothing to write home about. We really did not do San Diego justice at all. We flew out early the next morning with happy memories.
It was nice to be away long enough to actually be ready to get back home.

Link to San Francisco Post

Travel Post