Day Sixteen

Santa Cruz Day!

So, I was going to wake up at the ass-crack of dawn to make my way to Diridon to grab the 17. I'm glad I waited for the next bus because, well, everything would have been closed when I got there. My stomach was a little woozy for some reason so I opted not to wear the whole bathing suit thing. I grabbed the 9:30a bus, arriving at 10:30a to grey, clouded skies and was glad I had given up on the whole tanning thing.

I hopped a bus to the east side of the highway and wandered, looking at some of the smaller shops and stopping in to The Crepe Place for breakfast. I made my way back downtown and headed north, discovering a thrift store, tiny gaming shop, used book store, and an occult shop whose incense was so strong I sneezed just walking past. I then made my way back south and caught a bus to the boardwalk.

By now the fog had burnt away and it was turning into a beautiful day. I and everyone else on the planet was heading for the pier and beach. It took about 20 minutes for the bus to crawl down there; I probably could have walked it in that length of time. Traffic was a wreck and I had to squeeze between bumper-to-bumper cars in order to cross the street.

I finally made it! There was a small music festival of some sort playing reggae to the right of the pier. To the left was a wedding reception. Great. I edged around the wedding crowd and wandered down to the water, enjoying the splash of the cold on my feet and legs and collecting some ocean water. I then wandered along the pier where I saw Spiderman playing acoustic guitar and enjoyed watching the sea lions as they sunned themselves under the pier.

I walked over to the Boardwalk and found a huge crowd of people. Nothing really caught my eye so I slowly made my way back to the bus stop and then into downtown proper. I had an hour before the next bus back to San Jose, so I stopped in at Khyber Pass for dinner.

It wasn't until I arrived home that I realized I'd left my book on the bus. :/ No one turned it in to the transit authority or Amtrak, either. Oh well.

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