I Heart Weekends Away

What a nice weekend away!
I couldn't update yesterday because I will still on the beach in my mind.

Santa Cruz was awesome, the weather was terrific, a little overcast Saturday morning, but it cleared up pretty fast and ended up being hot and sunny the rest of the weekend.

When we got to the hotel, the room was full of surprises and some of my favorite things. I wondered why my sales contact was asking me what I liked a while back when I was booking for my boss - nice touch, non chocolate candy, corn nuts, champagne, fashion magazines and a pink photo album to keep my photos from the weekend in - oh, and a big Mylar Happy Birthday balloon!Our room had a balcony that was right on the beach! We sat there at night and in the morning while enjoying our time of the day appropriate beverage (coffee or wine). We listened to the Loverboy concert from there on Friday night instead of dealing with crowds of people, it was so fun, singing, dancing and air guitaring up there.
Saturday we slept in a bit and then went walking on the Pier to get some lunch and walk around and saw these guys hanging out so we stopped for a while.

We decided to go to the Boardwalk and check out the rides and maybe get some dessert. We were intrigued by the "fried Twinkie" concept but when we decided to share one, we were bummed and disappointed, it was not so good and sort of cold in the middle like it had been frozen. Good thing we didn't each get one.We walked around for a couple hours checking things out, people watching and playing games in the arcade and then went back to the hotel to rest before dinner. We ended up taking a almost 3 hour nap, got up at 7:30 and went to dinner at the newly reopened super nice restaurant at the hotel called Aquarius. We had great cocktails to start and each got appetizers (their menu is layed out as "hook", "line" and "sinker" - for appetizers, soup/salad, entree). Tim had a roasted Romaine salad which was fabulous and I had the "chowda" - not like a typical clam chowder, it was little clams in their shells steamed in a broth that was spicy and not creamy like you would imagine. My entree was superb, one of the best I have had in a very long time. I had halibut that was on top of the this shmoo made from cooking cauliflower with butter until it fell apart (2 hours the manager told us) and then blended and piped into a stripe on the plate and a little ball of spring peas that had been chopped up with mint. It was deeeeelish! For dessert we had coffee and split their plate of ice cream sandwiches, which were phenomenal along with the Caramel sauce.Sunday morning we woke up and took our time packing up and checking out. Then we went to the lighthouse and Santa Cruz surfing museum before heading home. BayLee was a very good boy over the weekend and gave us an ear full when we get home as usual.