Beachcombing

Today was a great day with a nice trip to beautiful Santa Cruz. This trip was organized by the "American Language Program" which is somehow the international office here for us foreign students. They offered a free shuttle from the university to Santa Cruz and back home. Also there was the possibility to go surfing but I decided to not try that as it was 70$ for around one hour in the sea and as I heard from some the waves are pretty tough here - glad I decided to not try it. Will do it definitely somewhere else!

So we woke up early as the bus left at 9am and drove around one hour to Santa Cruz. There we first visited the Boardwalk. The weather was very foggy and a bit cold first but went to warm and windy which was great! And sooo much sun!!

There even was the possibility to win a donut pillow!!! I tried it and I had a bastketball approved person to help me but - we were too bad... so no win for me, will order one on Ebay ;-)

 Then we walked along the beachstreet to the pier.

Todays crew from left to right: Hong, Hera, Sarah, me and Ana. Andrea is missing in this pic and Meikel took the photo. And yes I am eating an blueberrybagel with peanutbutter...

At the pier there were sealions aaaaand - whales! Yesss! So unbelievable!!! A guy at the clam chowder booth told us that whales are coming near the shore because they are giving birth. There are currently around 200 whales near the shore. I've never seen a whale before in nature and I thought it was really specatucular!! We had clam chowder for lunch and were sitting on the pier when suddenly that guy next to us was yelling "There's a huge one!!" and there it was: the biggest whale I've could have ever imagined right under the pier 4meters under us. It was soooo huge!! I was so flashed I couldn't take a pic but the american lady next to us took one which she sent to me via MMS.

Look at this!!

This was another whale:

 And this was our first clam chowder!! So goood!

After the "whale-shock" we walked along the shore towards the surfers. Nice houses there!

Crazy hair - don't care.

The waves were really tough sometimes! And there even was a dad going surfing with his little boy who was around 5 years old!! Crazy!!!

This was the surfer museum - nice location!

Theeeen we walked along the beach towards the boardwalk back. The sea was cold but it was great!

Beach days make me tired! Will go to bed very early and tomorrow we are going to SF to do some shoppiiiiing ;-)