Road Trip part 2!

The second leg of our trip began early Tuesday morning.  We got up at 5 am, and were on the road by 6.  We then spent an hour driving to a "nearby" Starbucks (sadly there was one 30 seconds from our hotel, but it was "inconvenient" to drive to according to our GPS unit.  Sigh...  We got caffeinated though, and that's all that really matters, right?

We worked our way from downtown L.A. to the Pacific Coast Highway (Hwy 1).  This is a photo when we made it to Santa Monica and got our first glimpse of the ocean.

(quick note - i wasn't able to bring my fancy camera on this trip, so all of our photos were taken on our cell phones.  sorry for the crummy images!)



The drive north was gorgeous!  Normally I get carsick, but thankfully I was just fine the whole day of driving (8+ hours) and even knit in the car!

We drove through several fun towns, and our intention was to stop in Santa Cruz for the evening, but when we got to Monterey, we decided to stop for the night.  We found the yarn store - Monarch - and thankfully it was open!

Then using priceline, we got an amazing hotel room for the night at 1/2 price!  It was so cozy and comfortable.  It felt quite luxurious for the price too.  :)



This was taken the next morning...



This is me in front of the yarn store - you can see the tiny sign under the 529 on the building.  It was a great store, and the owner was friendly and helpful.

At the yarn store, we asked the the owner if she had any favorite restaurants.  We are so glad we did!  She recommended Max's Grill - a place that served "California French" food cooked by a Japanese chef.  Since I love sushi, and Dave loves French food, it seemed like a match made in Heaven.



We had the set dinner of Salmon and Scallops, and it was AMAZING!!!  We also ordered the Tempura Tuna Sushi rolls and they were so unique and delicious.  Instead of the tuna being battered and tempura fried, the whole outside of the roll was, but the tuna was just delicately seared.  It was melt in your mouth delicous.  YUM!

ps... Dave's salad was equally delicious.  Spinach with blue cheese, walnuts, and a raspberry vinaigrette dressing.





Then we went back to the hotel and crashed for the night.  We were SOOOO tired!