This is the second year in a row that a few of my friends and I decided to road trip up north to visit our friend Vanessa, who moved away from SoCal to do amazing things and became a teacher for Teach For America.
We left Friday evening and arrived in San Jose around midnight. We tried to go to sleep since we had plans to head to Carmel early in the morning, but we were too excited to see each other and ended up knocking out around 2AM.
Alvin, Vanessa's boyfriend came by her apartment in the morning and we headed to Carmel By the Sea, which is Monterey county. We stopped by this cute little shopping village at a restaurant called From Scratch for brunch, before heading to the beach. I shared a Mexican Eggs Benedict with Loie, it was pretty delicious! I enjoyed the chorizo instead of the traditional Canadian Bacon.
Loie was so eager to jump into the ocean. Pretty sure he's become part fish.
Yay, friends!
Loie decided to build some sand castles, so we helped by trying to reinforce his sand fort.
Then Loie dug a hole...so we buried him in it. People liked to walk by and take a look and ask how deep the hole was and how long he was in there haha.
NorCal beaches are slightly different from SoCal beaches, but one thing is the same...parking is terrible! Most of the beaches near me aren't dog-friendly, unless they're specifically called a dog beach, but I saw so many cute dogs in Carmel on the beach!
After the beach, we decided to walk around the town and sight see. I felt a very faux European vibe from the cute shops and alleyways lining the streets.
For dinner we headed to Downtown San Jose to the San Pedro Square Market. It's a building full of different food shops, there were so many options! I eventually bought tacos, because I can't resist tacos. Noms.
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The next morning we grabbed brunch, since we decided to sleep in. We went to Hash House in San Jose. I opted for a strawberry mimosa and crab eggs benedict (I just can't resist a good eggs benedict, especially because I get them so rarely and I love a good poached egg).
After brunch, we went to the Winchester Mystery House, because Lauren wanted to see it. And because we wanted to find ghosts *cue Ghostbusters theme music. We had to wait an hour for our tour to start, so we explored the gardens. The house is huge, and the layout is puzzling. There's an interesting story behind the house...basically Sarah Winchester believed she was cursed by the spirits of those killed by Winchester guns (her husband's company), and that the only way to stop the curse was to keep building the house. So there are doors that open up to walls, stairs that lead to a ceiling, a door to nowhere, it was really interesting actually.
After the Winchester Mystery House, we headed to Downtown San Jose to try Cream, famous for their ice cream sandwiches. I actually prefer Diddy Riese in Westwood LA, they're also cheaper. But the line for Cream was almost non-existent, so bonus points for that.
We headed back to LA shortly after, since we wanted to avoid the Labor Day traffic. We were sad to say goodbye. But I'm glad I got to see some of my friends, since we're all either struggling through post-grad life or struggling through our last year of college. I'm really blessed to have friends that I can go months without seeing, but when we get together it's just like we just saw each other yesterday.
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