San Francisco: Monterey

Our last few days in California were spent down in the Monterey/Gilroy area. One of my college friends was getting married and I was so excited to join her on her special day!

We drove down to Gilroy, where our hotel for the weekend was located. It was about an hour and a half from the airport and the drive was really lovely.

Our first night, we mainly just checked out Gilroy and ate dinner at In-n-Out (yeah, that's a total of 3, or err... maybe 4 times, who's counting?). The next morning, bright and early, we headed out to Monterey. We had a few hours to kill before the wedding and I really wanted to see the town.

It was a 45 minute drive from our hotel and we saw some interesting things along the way including the artichoke capital of the world and a little Carly Rae Jepsen sand writing (Call Me MYBE?).

Not gonna lie, parking in Monterey was a nightmare. It's SUPER expensive and hard to find. Eventually, we found a spot in some lot that cost us a fortune. Live and learn. After parking, we kind of just wandered around. Our first stop was to see the harbor seals, who definitely had the right idea about chilling on the beach on this gorgeous day.

We headed over towards the main drag and walked by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I was kind of bummed that Adam didn't really want to go check it out and we really didn't have all that much time. I probably should have gone anyway, I've heard such awesome things about it. Those little can labels were all over the town incased in the cement. I think I saw about 4-5 different ones.

Cannery Row, down the road from the aquarium, was basically just a bunch of knick-knack touristy shops and restaurants, but it had a lovely view from the little park area. We had lunch at the Cannery Row Brewing Company.

We really didn't do too much in Monterey, since we had to head back to the hotel before the wedding to get dressed and pick up another friend from college to drive together. The wedding was at this gorgeous ranch near Gilroy. The whole thing was exactly how I imagined a California wedding would be.

We nabbed the bride so that the four alumnae, Lauren, Almut, Me, and Katie, could pose for a picture with her! And yes, it was soooo hot out that day - we were melting. I looked like a hot mess. I have no idea how Almut (the bride) looked so amazing still (share your secrets girl!)!

Adam and I had great table mates and I had really lovely time catching up and meeting Katie and her fiance (we somehow didn't meet in college).

How amazing is that view? California has some of the best sunsets for sure!

On our way back, we stopped at the Apple Campus in Cupertino. Adam had visited for his interview just a few days before and he wanted to show me what the place looked like. It's like a small city. Adam got to travel back there again last month for his first day of work.

We stopped at this place called "The Melt" in Stanford for lunch. It kind of made me laugh that California has a restaurant called Melt and Cleveland has a restaurant with the same name, but they're so different from one another. One is very obviously healthy and the other is, er, not. both are so good though. I had a delicious apple and brie grilled cheese.

Right next to Melt, was Sprinkles Cupcakes. We've been wanting to try this cupcake place since we've been on our cupcake crusade. We said the passcode of the day to get our free cupcake (chocolate peanut butter) and we bought a key lime and a red velvet. The chocolate peanut butter were SO good. I think it was because they had a lot of frosting on them, which the key lime and red velvet were lacking. I like my frosting. It was a good ending to our trip to Northern California.

The next day we headed home. Stay tuned for my trip to Pittsburgh and visit with Adam!