It was that time again where we buckled up and braved the city streets in a little rental car. Happy to leave the city after its confines, we jump out of bed and organise ourselves for our first road trip.
But shit… the realisation just dawned on us that we didn’t bring our drivers license’s… So used to using our digital copies on our phones and never carrying a wallet, it had completely slipped our minds.
So we set off to the rental car place around the corner and hope that our passports would be enough, but we had a pretty bad feeling that we wouldn’t be driving which meant all our plans for the week were going to be foiled and we’d have to take… busses shudder.
The Alamo guy looked like he had been smoking weed since childbirth with droopy eyes and fluffy hair.
He got our booking up, then asked for our credit card and driver’s license, we showed him the digital and explained that that’s just what we use at home. He called his manager, who gave a pretty quick no in reply. Bugger.
Thinking quick we asked if I could get someone from home to snap a photo of my license to which he reluctantly said it should be ok. Problem was it was 2 am back home, so our trip would have to be put on hold.
After leaving the car hire place and walking about 20 minutes, I searched through my photo reel on my phone only to find that a photo of my licence was there all along! Success!!
So it was back to the shop, we finalised the car hire, then set off down the west coast of California, the day trip was saved!
Our first stop was a lighthouse, which turned out to be closed off so we couldn’t go in.
Next was a lovely little town called Half Moon Bay where we got an absolute epic sandwich and a delicious maple pecan and white chocolate cookie.
After chowing down, we continued to another lighthouse at Pescadero, where we ended up seeing a little pod of whales (and Adam kept going on about seeing something blue in the water? Wtf…).
Next we headed to Santa Cruz for a little drive around, then the stop we had been looking forward to, the Redwood forest, which was home to gigantic sequoia trees as big as skyscrapers!
We meandered around the Redwood Forest Loop and soaked up the sights and smells that seemed to cleanse off the city confines and refresh our batteries. It was at this point that Adam announced that it was our 24th anniversary! Woo Hoo!
One last stop along the way was the Google Experience, which was smack bang in the middle of Silicon Valley and surrounded by Google’s manicured and expansive grounds.
The “experience” (I still don’t know if Americans have a grasp on this word) wasn’t quite an experience, it was just a Google shop, a café, a lounge area and a pop-up shop.
They did have some cool sculptures and a LOT of nerds getting around, I’m talking proper glasses, slick hair and weedy looking nerds, so that was a bonus, but calling it an experience, the jury is still out.
Time to make tracks for the Airbnb and back to the city. Unfortunately we timed our run into the city poorly and drove at about 40kms for the majority of the highway which come to its pinnacle at our exit. At least we had the Minnesota Timberwolves game to listen to on the radio.
After craaaaawling for a few kms all while listening to the Timberwolves give up a 24pt lead with 10 minutes remaining which made Adam turn quite red, we finally broke through, parked up and headed inside the Airbnb.
Feeling rested after a lie down, we googled a nice place for dinner which was only a 20 minute walk up the street. While we were walking, we noticed a butt load of homeless and sinister looking folks also walking up and down this street.
As it turns out there was a pretty big homeless shelter right by where we were looking for the restaurant, which I might add was just a hole in the wall surrounded by a ton of food delivery bikes.. Yeah, no thanks.
So it was off to Whole Foods and a walk back down the sinister streets until out of nowhere, the baseball crowds from tonight’s game started coming past, so we joined the hordes and felt a little safer.
We picked up a soup, some soda water and a Cherry Pie (for our anniversary celebrations) and made our way back, cooked it up and had a nice celebratory dinner together before ending the night with the third last episode of Survivor where Zara (aka Snowboots) made a stupid decision and messed up the vote!
The end of another fun day. Tomorrow we’re planning on doing another walk around San Francisco, as well as trying to get tickets for the Warriors-Spurs game.
More Photos from Day 4
