Howdy hi people,

We left the City of tramps behind and what I forgot to mention in the last blog was we spent most of our last day in the hotel room trying to organise where to go. Our parents were leaving in one day and we didn't have a clue where to go...........on one hand it's nice, the world is your oyster and it's an incredible feeling to have when your biggest problem in life is thinking of your next place to visit! But when you have a time limit and you need to organise some sort of itinerary things can get pretty stressful. We had plans to see nick and Erica in Nashville at some point, we got our act together and in one hour we managed to book 2 flights; one into Nashville from Vegas and one out of Nashville to Vancouver..... That means we had our date set in stone but we still had 2 and half weeks spare before Nashville so we decided on Santa Cruz.

We left for Santa Cruz on the public train, that dropped us off in San Jose and we got a bus to Santa Cruz. Sounds like a bit of a mess on but it was time to get back to the backpacker life style, we had been wined and dined for 2 weeks straight in fancy hotels, I was worried about the transition...........could we cope again? But as soon as we sat on the public transport next to all the other weirdo's............it just felt right!! Haha the whole journey took about 4 hours which wasn't that bad and went without a hitch.

The hostel we stayed at was a HI hostel and we had to stay in separate dorm rooms because they had no mixed sex rooms!! My room was full of freaks, there's always one guy who's high on weed and thinks he's one with astronomy and knows the meaning of life............ if that wasn't bad enough the hostel had a stupid rule of closing from 11am to 5pm and all guests had to be out of their rooms rain or shine!!!..................what the hell am i paying all this money for if we can't even use the kitchen....DAFT!! Eager to get back into the backpacker lifestyle we headed for the local supermarket which we hadn't done for 2 weeks, where are all these Wal-Mart's I ask???? They had this stupid small supermarket called Trader Joes, it was one of these organic, colourful ones with no home brand labels......I hated it, just writing about it brings back how angry I got it was so expensive and had no baked beans...................NO BAKED BEANS!!!!!!!!!!! At this point I was angry not just with Santa Cruz but with America in general for not be backpacker friendly haha the next couple of days was mainly cold and rainy however we did get one nice day where we went to the fair which is located right on the beach a bit like south shields fair but a bit bigger we then just lay on the beach and snoozed because we can haha

Santa Cruz was known as a hip and happening place with weird unique people, the town resembled this with old theatre booths and one off vintage clothes shops littering the streets. It's a coastal town and offers great coastal cliff walks where we saw a number of wild seals jumping in and out of the surf. For food we made the mathematical decision that it was cheaper to eat at taco bell everyday rather than cook..............ohhhhhh wait, thats right.............THE KITCHEN WAS CLOSED!!!! Idiots!

We bit the bullet and changed to a private double room for the extra $3 dollars or whatever and asked a member of staff what was good to do in Santa Cruz just in case we missed it (just for the record this guy looked like a thunderbirds puppet) haha his response was...........ooo there's a lovely little bakery just on the corner, it does lovely garlic and herb focaccia bread........ Me and Lou looked at each other and I could tell we were thinking the same thing..................."here mate!!! I've jumped out of a plane, dived the barrier reef, stroked tigers and stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!................. we can get a Greggs pasty anytime mate, I think we'll pass"bozo!!!

We spent the last day in the library because it was raining all day and we couldn't be in our hostel so it was the next best place, Lou practically read a full book. We spent a lot of time organising our next port of call as well and we decided on Monterey just because it was recommended in conversion once. By this time we also had decided we were headed back to Vegas ............ we deliberated over the decision but why not?? We loved it that much....why not go back, it's not like we have a set schedule! Next stop Monterey!!

Love Adam and Louise xx