Freedom Fries on the Coast

Racing towards San Francisco, we started talking about what all we wanted to see while we were in the area.  Alcatraz was #1 on the list but as we crossed the Golden Gate bridge it occurred to us that it was a Saturday and chances of getting tickets were slim.

As expected, tickets were sold out until the next day. Instead we headed to a part of the Fisherman’s Warf that I didn’t get a chance to go to earlier in the week. After parking, the first order of business was to get some claim chowder and a few beers. While walking down the pier, we saw a kid with a huge basket of freedom fries (that’s right, I am bringing that one back). Out of no where, a seagull swooped in front of his face and the fries went flying. There was no 5 second rule here, a flock of seagulls attacked the fries and they were gone within seconds. Everyone around died laughing but I do feel bad for the kid… I think he was a little upset.

I had forgotten to upload all my pictures from Napa so I was in need of another memory card ASAP. Just incase you were wondering, when you walk into a camera store with a nice camera, you are an instant target for salesmen. I literally had salesmen begging to show me lenses and cases, polarized filters and video cameras.

I am pretty sure Ashley got a good idea of what parenthood is like as I tried to go into every attraction in the area. I am still pissed that she didn’t want to do the mirror maze at Ripley’s Believe it or Not.

Next we found a bakery where we bought about $10 dollars worth of cookies and a huge loaf of sourdough bread. They also made little alligators and turtles out of bread.

We then headed over to see the sea lions off of Pier 39. I didn’t get a chance to see them earlier in the week due to the heavy storm that blew through while I was getting my water massage.

We knew it was about time to head out of town so we started towards the car. Of course, when you set two extremely ADD people on a task, the chances of getting sidetracked are pretty high. We skipped the car so we could head towards Ghirardelli Chocolate factory where we managed to consume at least 1,000 calories in less than 5 minuets. On the way back we passed a 75 year old homeless man that was asking people for money by saying “Can I have a dollar so I can go buy some Pussy?” I try to keep the blog PG, but we literally laughed about this guy for a few hours, impersonating him and wishing that we had gotten it on video.

Once we made it back to the car we drove to the nearest Cheese shop for more stinky cheese (we went with this stuff called the Stinky Bishop, it was really good) and a few beers to go with it. We made it down Lombard Street before we finally left San Francisco and headed towards LA.

Lombard Street (Thats me!)

We drove down highway 101 until just before dark. Our goal was to make it to Monterrey for the night but after shopping around on Hotwire.com we realized that we could stay about 20 miles north and save about $100 bucks. We ended up booking a room at the Comfort Inn or something like that and headed straight out to the beach to catch the last light of the day and eat our Stinky Bishop.

The hot tub was our next stop. We made a lap around the pool area to see if there was anyone out there that we could become friends with. After ordering a pizza to be delivered to the hot tub we headed out for a soak. The next 30 minuets was easily the most awkward 30 minuets of the entire trip. In the hot tub were two 15 year old girls who had about as much personality as a bundle of sticks. They sat there and stared at us and whispered to themselves as we waited for the pizza and talked about what all we wanted to see the next day. It’s hard to describe what it was like but think about sitting in a hot tub with those freaky twins from The Shining. The pizza finally arrived and we got the hell outta there.

The next morning we woke up and drove through Monterrey and into Pebble Beach. Pebble Beach was amazing, everything about it was amazing.

View from Clubhouse

Pebble Beach

For lunch we stopped in Carmel, which is probably one of the coolest little towns I have ever visited. Everything had so much character and the weather is perfect all the time.

Where we got lunch in Carmel

My new hat

From Carmel we drove towards LA by way of Highway 1. About 30 minuets south of Carmel we were stopped due to a washout on the road. We were a little bummed cause we wanted to stop in Big Sur and watch people surf. After back tracking, we cut through the mountains and over to 101 and down to Santa Barbra where we grabbed dinner on the Pier.

View from the restaurant in Santa Barbra

At one point, we decided to stop and check out the pier in some random town about an hour north of Santa Barbra. Sitting at the mouth of the pier was an old man sitting with his legs crossed on his rascal, singing into a microphone with the echo turned all the way up. Kinda had to be there but was hilarious!

We ended up getting a huge crab pot to split but not before shoving all the bread that was brought to the table in Ashley’s purse so we would have something to eat with the rest of the Stinky Bishop. We laughed the entire time because the server was defiantly onto our shenanigans plus taking bread from the table is against everything that our parents have ever taught us. We didn’t care though cause we needed some bread!

The last stop before making it into LA was the liquor store where Ashley wanted to get some Champaign to pop as we knocked and were greeted at Erin and Kristen’s (Ashley’s two best friends from college) place in Santa Monica.

This was the only photo I got of the welcome party

As a side note, we impersonated a scene from Borat where he goes through the cheese section of a local grocery asking what is cheese and what isn’t ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liRSXULdJw4 ) from the time we left Napa until this very moment. With that being said, we arrived in Santa Monica at just the right time because Ashley’s personality and mine are enough alike that 4 days with each other is enough to put anyone in an asylum! We were pumped to have Erin and Kristen there to help saturate the insanity.