We arrived in Santa Cruz on a weekday to find the famous boardwalk from the film "The Lost Boys" closed until the weekend :( So we took a stroll on the Pier and headed to one of the many seafood restaurants on offer. Aimee spent a while taking photos of all the seals that had a permanent spot on a pontoon to the side of the pier, before we headed to the beach to make the most of our last week of guaranteed sun for a while! The place was fairly quiet and chilled out compared to our other city stopovers, which was a welcoming change. That evening was spent exploring downtown, before finding a mexican restaurant for dinner. We saw mainly homeless people and buskers on the streets rather than tourists, which made for an interesting walk back to the motel.

The following day we headed to do the scenic drive along the coast, as well as checking out the surf museum, which was in a converted lighthouse. Santa Cruz was where surf brand O'Neill invented the wetsuit, and it has a surf town atmosphere but nothing compared to the beach towns back in Australia. The museum was quite tiny, but it was interesting to look at how surfing has changed over the years. We also saw evidence of a few shark attacks in the area, which wasn't helping my task of getting Aimee into the water! We did however get some good shots of the locals in action. The rest of the day was spent on the beach.

When leaving Santa Cruz we took the scenic freeway 1 south down the coast back towards Los Angeles. There were plenty of stops along the way, where we could take pictures and see some more wildlife including squirrels, elephant seals and a few rare californian condor eagles which were huge! There was a fair amount of low cloud around in the morning which was a little disappointing because of the great coastal views we were missing out on. We enjoyed a sushi lunch on the coast before hitting our next destination Santa Barbara.

Our first stop in Santa Barbara was the courthouse where there were great views of the surrounding area. We tagged along on a guided tour and actually learned a fair amount about its history including how Santa Barbara has retained its spanish looking architecture throughout. Along the tour we managed to interrupt a wedding photo shoot which they weren't too happy about! Afterwards we walked down State street where there were plenty of upmarket shops to entice us, although only window shopping was mainly the activity for the rest of the afternoon, apart from a couple of "bargain" pair of shoes as Aimee called them.

We headed back to state street the next day for more mexican food and Sunday NFL at the Sandbar. We also headed to the beach and visited the 9/11 memorial where nearly 3000 flags were placed in memory of people that were lost. Along the pier there were some creative attempts at raising funds by homeless guys, including an impressive looking sand castle of the world trade centre. Aimee got a photo of one, but was scoffed at by the guy for only donating some quarter coins (Beggars can't be choosers buddy!) On the drive back to the motel, we stopped off on the coast to watch the clearest sunset we've seen on our travels, a great finish to the day.

On our drive south we stopped off at Malibu for lunch and also to check out the amazing beach houses. We arrived at Redondo beach and headed straight for the pier diner for chilli fries, a la "The OC" and sat in the same booth used by the characters on the show. The afternoon was spent on the beach before seeing a great white shark exhibition, again on the pier. It was a 16 ft great white caught accidentally in a fishing net many years ago. I didn't realise you could dry preserve a shark, and it still look so alive. Although the mouth area had to be reconstructed it was still a scary sight in the low lighting! In the evening we headed to the Cheescake Factory for another great meal, where we splashed out on valet parking for the first time, only for them to park it within sight, just meteres from the front door, and then we had to wait in line to pick it up afterwards!

Our last full day of travelling was spent in the sun as much as possible! Redondo beach was quiet which was nice for my last afternoon beach nap! A nice chilled day was finished off by me stepping barefoot in some tar which took forever to remove, and then getting a parking ticket after we had already paid :(. After getting ourselves organised for our flight the next day, we went for dinner at Chilli's which we enjoyed a lot back in Malaysia, which now seems like a lifetime ago. We had what we thought to be, our last naughty food of the trip. However at the airport the next day, Aimee had her last Panda Express chinese and I had one last burger. Thank you USA! After an amazing trip we were now on our 10 hour flight back to the UK, and as my entertainment system didn't work, we were compensated with a steady flow of free alcohol by the stewardess :) This helped Aimee with the first of her post holiday blues!!

Thank you all for your comments and following us around the world, now its back to reality..........for a while!