California – Santa Booze!
After any wedding comes the honeymoon. I’ve been on a honeymoon before shortly after Pezza & I got married, it was good fun and it’s not a nice feeling to think that you’ll never go on a honeymoon again! So, with Foe & Erin safely married it was time for the honeymoon – they decided to spend a week in Santa Cruz on the Californian coast and then head to Vegas; the great thing about this honeymoon was that we all went along for the first leg!
The happy couple arranged a beach house and after the brunch at Bill & Laura’s it was time to head over the windy roads of Santa Cruz mountain to our next destination. We found it fairly easily as we had no car issues and could therefore follow Paulie’s sat nav. We must have arrived late afternoon – Foe, Erin & the Kershaws were arriving later as they had a meal in Morgan Hill with the family. We had a recky down to the boardwalk to see what Santa Cruz had to offer, this is very much the beach/amusement park/tacky part of the resort and we struggled to find anywhere we could call ‘HQ’ for the next few days. We had dinner and pumped the barmaid for info on where we could tube, the general consensus was head down Pacific Avenue. Stuoobs was keen to get going and rather than go home and change he suggested that we “head down Pacific and ‘see what happens’”. Despite his optimism we did go home and cracked open a beer whilst proceeding to get ready. Amazingly, Pezza suggested that just the boys go out! This was terrible news to Ollie and Tim who were quite happy to sit in a dark house with a cup of warm milk after the mayhem that was the wedding night, however they succumbed to beer pressure and we were on our way!
Paulie and Karen were staying in a hotel and came out to meet us, our first port of call was the Blue Lagoon (it had a neon sign). It was a little unconventional but as it was the first bar we could always move on after one. We found the barman to be a bit odd but he was fully on board with giving us Jagerbombs for bugger all! A few more in there and it time to take our Boys night (and Karen, who kept up exceptionally well) onto the next couple of bars. Stuoobs was beginning to flag but Ollie & Tim were now bouncing off the walls after their earlier reluctance however ‘one more’ and it was time for home. By the time we got home the Fodens had arrived and we now had a full house.
The next morning we had our best lie in all week, the weather was cloudy and Easty & I were thinking of things to to during the day in Santa Cruz when it’s cloudy. We could think of one thing. Erin assured us that the sun would come out early afternoon and she wasn’t wrong so we stocked up and headed to Santa Cruz Main Beach for a day of sun, banter and beach volleyball!
That evening was the first of our planned activities for the week, the Foes had planned some pub golf; Natalie & Clare wanted to know what happened at the end of pub golf…….
We crawled through the bars of Santa Cruz and gradually got more and more ‘Pub Golfed’ ending up in the 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall bar; a bar that has an arsenal of 99 beers and you can earn a plaque on the wall if you shift the lot of them. As men we are programmed to turn down every loyalty based system in the world, such as store cards for example, however a plaque on the wall of a pub? Where do we sign? We optimistically thought that between us we could do the lot which seemed like a good idea until you’re faced with drinking a bottle of La Fin Du Monde, a 9% beer whose title translates as ‘The End of the World’.
Anyway, this was the final bar of the night and it was karaoke night – more than enough to keep us fully entertained until the fun and games began.
We all woke up feeling terrible. It was good news that Foe had arranged a day’s wine tasting (tasting=drinking). We were told that the minibus would be picking us up at 11.00am however what turned up wasn’t a minibus. I’d always dreamt of the ‘BOTT minibus’ which is essentially a minibus with the inside ripped out and replaced with a limo type interior, a fridge and a loud sound system; this is what Foe had booked and it didn’t take long for our hangovers to drift through our bloody Marys and into the Champagne. We had hooked up Stuoobs’ iPod to the radio and drifted through three of Santa Cruz Mountain’s finest wineries getting thoroughly thoroughly smashed in the process. We were supposed to visit a fourth winery but by this time we had acquired many bottles from the three visited so far and the power ballads were blasting out so we told the driver to just drive around for an hour!
This was a superb day.
(1) First glass with Donald Sutherland (2) On the minibus – getting wrong; (3) Clare & Pezza (4) Our picnic at one of the wineries (5) Bus driver Pez (6) Band Aid!
From then on we drifted through the day, firing up the barbecue, some mild nudity and then heading back down Pacific.
1. Paulie Tossing, 2. Pezza Begging for Beer, 3. Bottle of Tequila and Bowl of Gin, 4. REM gig
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From then on it was a thoroughly good couple of days and definitely one of the best honeymoons I have ever been on. Eventually it was time to drive back up to San Francisco to stay in a hotel for one more night before getting our early morning flight home via Philadelphia.
Definitely one of the best holidays ever. The full photo album is via this link
We got back Saturday morning and it’s been a struggle to get back to normality with the body clock but with the start of the football season coming up we have a great weekend ahead with the Geordie side of the family coming down for a few days of fun.
Andy
xxx
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