Santa Cruz, CA

This past weekend we went to attend Bryan’s sister Jimi’s graduation from UC Santa Cruz. We stayed with Bryan’s family in a home they rented near the beach. Our first stop was at Staff of Life, a health food store to stock up on food for the weekend. We loved this store, and a few others we happened to pop into while walking around the downtown area. Santa Cruz is very health conscious, made evident by the many organic restaurants and grocery stores, completely putting Southern California to shame. Every restaurant even if not “organic” seemed to make an effort to use organic ingredients on the menu. To us this seemed huge, because you are lucky to even find a health conscious restaurant in Orange County offering organic salad greens on the menu. Our first night we went to La Posta Vecchia to celebrate Bryan’s 26th birthday. La Posta is an Italian restaurant specializing in house made pasta, and all the food was quite well done!

Our second day we drove down to the downtown area and walked around all the shops. It was a breath of fresh air to be in a shopping plaza that was not full of chain stores. Taken by surprise by all the unique offerings we returned to feed the meter about 4 times after realizing each time that we were not done yet. We spent a few hours reading various books in the Bookshop Santa Cruz, delighted by their unique selection of titles. Afterward we ate a late lunch at Chocolate Cafe, where we had some delicious mediterranean food and split a chocolate truffle.

The next day Jimi’s graduation took place in a beautiful setting on the University’s campus overlooking the ocean. It may have been beautiful, but it was also midday and very hot! Luckily we thought ahead to bring a large beach umbrella and there we various people trying to mooch off our shade. After the ceremony we headed over to Pearl of the Ocean, for a Sri Lankan dinner. Unfortunately Megan felt ill and had to leave with out trying the food, which was wonderful. The whole family is quite fond of Indian food and we found Sri Lankan food to be similar, but incorporating flavors from South East Asia. Later we discovered the restaurant was named the best new restaurant in Santa Cruz and we can’t disagree that it is worth stopping by. Sunday evening we flew back to Orange County via Southwest Airlines, thankful to be skipping out on the 8 hour drive back.