Generally the only things we came off the road for were the incredible views -
and of course for food, gas and restrooms.
The first town where we had a break was Santa Cruz - supposedly a very nice
place, according to Mssrs Lonely and Planet: Santa Cruz is just as beautiful
as Monterey and its ‘beach town’ vibe is more authentic (P. 968). We,
however, were not very impressed as we drove into the town. First we spent
about half an hour looking for the town centre and somewhere to park. Our
mistake was probably that we were looking for specific streets and places
mentioned in our travel book. These turned out to be impossible to find, so we
started just looking for signs to the town centre. These were surprisingly rare.
We did find signs, but not for the town centre. They were mostly
prohibiting certain activities such as: do not stop, no access, no skateboards,
no breathing. Parking became more urgent because our stomachs were
empty and our bladders were full. Thankfully we did not see a ‘No Urinating’
sign.
Eventually we found the main street and a parking space, but now we
needed change for the meter - this was the first time we had had to pay to
park and we were not prepared for it. It is not like we thought we were above
paying to park, like the Queen or Michael Schumacher, we had just spent our
time either in woods where parking meters are fairly rare, or on our campsites
where (fortunately) you do not have to pay by the hour to park. Once parking
was sorted we looked for somewhere to have brunch, and go to the toilet.
The restaurant we chose seemed to combine these two facilities too
closely as the whole place smelt of wee. However we had to stop and the