Bruised and bottled ink, CA

The 1 Highway is pretty amazing, if you haven’t seen it, it’s impossible to really give the scope of what we saw; roads that popped as if from nowhere on mountain sides, some barely wide enough to fit two cars, random beach side stop offs and adorable but out of place cafe’s along the way. We went to santa cruz, which I didn’t know had a fairground boardwalk, but we explored it. It really is an attraction on the beach, you can walk off the rides on to sand. We were far

more interested by the arcade though, Skeeball is my new favourite game I think.
While driving through San Jose we had our first - and hopefully only - stop by the police, Jamie was going a little too fast in a residential area. We stopped with some fresh strawberries to watch the sunset on a little beach, surprise surprise cloud cover sort of ruined that and Jamie saw a dead seal which was sad. Jamie let me drive the car around the empty parking lot, and neither of us are dead so I’m taking that as a win. It’s pretty cool that the first car I ever drove was a 2015 convertible Chevy Camaro. After going into a really cool “british” pub, which had a double decker bus that was the smoking area, and I had my first cup of tea in a month! We also found a strange sand covered oblong table in the back and after the rules were explained had our first game of shuffleboard, I’m better than Jamie, I think it’s the patience thing, in that he has none.

San Francisco is strange, though it was warm in half moon bay, as soon as we got to san fran it was foggy with spitty rain, we got to the hotel really early so parked up and decided to explore. We walked to Fishermans wharf through Union Square and looked around for a while and considered hiring bikes to go to the golden gate bridge but as it was foggy ad raining we though that tomorrow would be a better bet. I was beat so when we got back to the hotel around 6 I went for a nap and woke up at * o’clock the next morning.
We left the hotel at about 11 and went to Union Square to catch a cable car, which was awesome, to the wharf where it was even more grim weather wise than the day before but there was no better time to hire bikes. I realised that there’s a reason that I don’t cycle anymore, and that is that it really hurts your bum if you do it uphill for more than about 30 seconds. there are quite a few hills to get to the golden gate bridge but it’s way worth it, the golden gate bridge is beautiful and though I came back bruised I also got the sight of that reddish brown structure and the bay beneath me as I rode.
After bikes we had some lunch and headed towards a tattoo parlour I had been in the day before so I could fix the cut off top of one of my tattoos. We found it and the nicest guy was working who said he’d be able to fix my paper airplane and do another small tattoo for $70 which is a steal so now I have a new tattoo. After tattooing up we went to the Golden Gate Tap Room for dinner and drinks and also another game of shuffleboard, this time adjacent another team, who were super nice and from florida, but they’d never been to Seaside, which sucks for them because it’s great. Were headed to the avenue of the giants next and I can’t begin to explain how excited I am for that!