Day 5: Santa Cruz to Berkeley

We started in Santa Cruz and had the 'free' breakfast at the hotel (which had the worst shower ever made).

We headed into San Francisco.  We stopped at the Legion of Hono(u)r.  We thought it was going to be some sort of war memorial.  Turned out to be a pretty good art museum.  We spent about 90 minutes wandering through.  We really enjoyed it - despite the fact that neither of us know about visual art at all.

We drove down the hill to Baker Beach and got some awesome shots of the Golden Gate bridge (isn't Cam getting good at the artsy shots? :))

We then headed over to Berkeley.  Stopped at a little vegan cafe for a super late lunch.  It wasn't particularly good, so I won't waste your time with those photos.

For dinner we headed to Herbivore - The Earthly Grill.  It was really freaking good. 

Started with cocktails:

We had the vegan nachos:

I had the quesadillas:

Cam had the orange pepper chicken:

We headed to the Albatross Bar for a few drinks after dinner (it was just down the road from our hotel).  It was a pretty cool bar.  They had games, so we played a round of chess, connect 4 and boggle.  I only won at boggle (Cam whopped me at the other ones).

On day 6 we headed into San Francisco on the train. That's for another post!

Day 4: Pismo Beach to Santa Cruz

We headed out of Pismo Beach at the crack of dawn.  We stopped at a little cafe in San Luis Obispo called Linnaeas.

We had an orange and pomegranate muffin.

It was pretty good.  It was not a flavour combination I would have guessed would work.

We drove north along the Shoreline Highway most of the day.  Saw some pretty incredible views.  (I'll add more photos from Cam's camera when we get home).

We stayed the night in Santa Cruz.  We stayed across the road from a super depressing casino.

For dinner we went to the Saturn Cafe.  We had shakes to start.  I had the mint chocolate chip and Cam had the vanilla.  They were basically melted ice-cream.  (not pictured because we inhaled them so quickly).

I had a 'chicken' burger and Cam had the jalapeno burger:

We split a short stack of pancakes to finish.  NOM!

Day 3: Los Angeles to Pismo Beach

On day 3 we headed out of Los Angeles into Santa Barbara.  We visited the Mission there (it was pretty cool - Mum and Dad, you should definitely visit - it has a religious retreat thingy and a Moreton Bay Fig!).

Breakfast that day was in LA.  We visited Trader Joe's again for Tofurkey.  Damn, even the cardboard was good.

After visiting the Mission, we stopped at Whole Foods to grab a few things for a picnic lunch.

Our heads may have exploded inside the store.  This is a few photos of the cold section:

WOW.

For lunch we had pizza from the in-store food area.  THEY HAVE VEGAN PIZZA.  FOR THREE DOLLARS. 

For dinner we had a selection of Tofurkey deli slices, olives, Daiya cheeze and yummy sourdough bread.  (We didn't get a photo of this spread).

We also headed to the Designer Factory stores at Pismo Beach.  Cam bought so many work shirts (he was excited 'cause now he can get away without ironing for more than two weeks at a time).

On Day 4 we headed to Santa Cruz.  Post to come shortly.

Byron Bay Food

Howdy!  So the hell of exams is over, so I’ve started back at work 4 days a week and have been spending the Friday doing criminal law research for a lecturer.  It’s actually pretty fun, just hard to do in the heat!
Anyhoooooo, Cam and I went down to Byron last weekend to visit his sister and to generally spend time on our arses at the beach.

Broken Head Beach, Monday morning
We spent Sunday leisurely driving to Byron Bay, stopping at Minion Falls @ Nightcap National Park (best name ever).  Which was fun, except we got caught in a thunderstorm at 2 in the afternoon!  Leeches really are gross…

Funny, I remember it being calmer than this! 
We then spent Monday at two different beaches.  Morning was at Broken Head Beach (the two posts above) and Watego’s – closer to the centre of Byron (not pictured ‘cause we actually went swimming).

Terrible turnout

There’s two awesome vegan health food stores in the middle of Byron Bay – Santo’s and The Fundamental Food Store (Fundie’s – they have a store in Brisbane’s Paddington).

This deep fried tastiness was Monday’s lunch.  The two pastries were yummy (one was a samosa, and the other was delicately flavoured veggies), Cam had the tempeh sushi (ew ew ew), and there was a bean fritter.  Sooooooo good!

Luckily the Woolworths at Byron had Tofutti cream cheeze – so there were bagels for breakfast on both days!  Nom nom nom…

This was from Santo’s various salads and amazing pies.  Plus, in front, a millet ball and a rice ball (we shared).  This was sooooo good!

Byron Bay’s famed unicorn farm sign…
It was a fantastic weekend! 
We visited the Gold Coast on the way home on Tuesday and visited Tian Ran!  I’ve got a whole post’s worth of pics, so they’ll go up soon!