Santa Cruz Day Trip

This Saturday I had to go up to UC Santa Cruz to be a panelist for a discussion on how to get into grad school. Since we hadn't been up there before, Jeremy decided to come with me and we made a day out of it. After the panel, we explored the Santa Cruz boardwalk a little. It was touristy, but a different kind of touristy than downtown Monterey. We definitely felt like Santa Cruz was more our speed. Here is a shot of Jeremy on the pier:



There were also a lot of sea lions on the pier. We still can't get used to the idea that we live somewhere where we can see seals and sea lions on a regular basis. There was a super-cute one that seemed to be posing for the gawkers:


And what is cuter than one sea lion? What about a whole pile of sea lions including a BABY SEA LION! It could only be cuter if there were a few otters thrown in:


After the pier, we walked through downtown Santa Cruz which we both really liked. It reminded me a lot of downtown Ann Arbor: cute shops, independent coffee joints on every corner, hippies playing drums in front of the independent coffee shops ... anyway, we could definitely see ourselves moving to Santa Cruz if we can figure out the commutes.

We topped off the evening by going out for a nice dinner. We found the restaurant online and as soon as we walked in, both Jeremy and I realized that we were definitely not hip enough to eat there. Once we got past that though we actually really enjoyed the food. By the time dessert rolled around the hipsters had filled the place up and they were a little loud for us so we headed for home. Kids these days!