Holy crap food in Santa Cruz is good

     I don't care about telling you about my days anymore, because what's really important is how much yummy food there is in Santa Cruz. Holy crap! It is really cool living somewhere with only a handful of corporate-owned stores and everything else is just unique, individual stores; it gives the town so much more personality! First there was the Picnic Basket, Then there was burger. (the lowercase and period were intentional - so trendy!) and The Buttery Cafe. burger. has a ton of different crazy burgers that are all named after famous people. For example, the Snooki is a burger in a grilled cheese with chili. They also have a really large and interesting beer and wine selection, I may have to go there for my 21st. 

     The Picnic basket is this little restaurant on the shore front. It's a sandwich/salad place that makes stuff in house and gets a lot of their ingredients locally (very Santa Cruz) and I'm pretty sure it is almost completely run by college students. I've gotten peach and goat cheese salad, roasted eggplant and goat cheese sandwich, yogurt with fresh peaches..... seeing a theme? Peaches and goat cheese; my perfect restaurant XD They also make BOMB fritattas.

     The Buttery Cafe has an amazing name. It's also a sandwich/salad place, but obviously with a more homey feel. I'm pretty sure this is the only place in SC that isn't completely laid back because it is always so freaking busy! No matter where you are standing, you are in someone's way, but it's totally worth it. They have a butter latte, which is just a latte made with a sweet buttery sauce that is delicious! And they make their hot cocoa by putting a giant scoop of ganache in a mug and mixing it with hot milk; comfort food level 10. They got some other cool things I've never seen before, like stuffed avocados :3
     
     There is also the Penny Ice Creamery, which is a little shop that makes their ice cream in house with local ingredients (like many shops in Santa Cruz seem to, which is really awesome). Their flavors are seasonal and really unique and delicious, like roasted barley and chocolate/anise/orange. I don't even know how to describe roasted barley, it's just amazing. They also have a really bomb float that's strawberry soda (also made in house) and basil ice cream mmmmmmm.......

     Even the food on campus is pretty great, it is definitely wayy better than I thought it would be. I've been here for 9 days now and the menu has yet to repeat itself. Every meal has 2 or 3 different hot options, there are always 2 soups, a bagel/bread station with tons of cream cheese and jam flavors, coffee machines, different desserts, and an organic/local salad bar. So I am happy with my food situation on campus. Well, mostly. Of course my dining hall closes at 7 and is closed on weekends so I gotta hike a bit to the next closest dining halls at night and on weekends. ALSO, up the hill from me is this cafe that has realllly good smoothies and Korean beef tacos. 

Move-In Week - Tuesday: Lot's of car, cows, food and sea lions

DISCLAIMER: I suck at taking pictures so for the most part you get pictures I pull off the internet. Deal with it.   

   So my family and I drove up in two cars, Harrison and me in my car and Mom and Dad in another. Before we left for Santa Cruz around 10 I stopped at the Jamba Juice on El Toro and got to see the greatest people waiting outside GameStop for GTA: V. So many silly boys that were just so cool and so excited to see in-game boobs. And that was the last glimpse I got of my hometown. 

     The drive up was alright; it took us about 9 hours including breaks, and two of those hours were spent just getting past LA. When the traffic finally let up, I admittedly took longer than I should have to get back up to speed and my mom promptly called Harry to tell him to tell me to either speed up or move over another lane. That's right folks, my mom was backseat-driving from the backseat of another car. Astounding! driving through all of the farmland was cool until the wind got so strong that it moved my car sideways. Not like, over a whole lane but enough to make my tires screech the most god-awful screech in the world! There were lots of furry cows and cows with really long horns. I liked them. Man, driving through all of those farming towns was crazy; I can;t even imagine how different life must be growing up in one of those towns. Are those people even technically in the same century? I doubt it. Might as well be aliens living in the middle of California :P 

     We were staying at an inn that was right on the beachfront by a boardwalk and pier, and we got dinner at this AWESOME place called the Picnic Basket. It's a little sandwich/salad type place that get's a lot of its produce local (a lot of places in SC get their stuff local actually, since SC is surrounded by farmland), and after a day of Carls Jr and potato chips it felt good to  eat a salad. They also make their own sodas and stuff, but the most impressive part was that the restaurant was completely run by college boys. We went their again for breakfast and there was never a person working over the age of maybe 24. After that we walked along the pier and there are a ton of sea lions that just hang out on the bottom of the pier that are very loud and fat and funny. 

   And then we slept. I'm not being graded and I hate conclusions.