Today we slept in a little again since we have such a nice bed to sleep in. Like yesterday, I woke up to Joey watching a documentary on Netflix on the tablet. We had some cereal and then I took a shower and hibernated upstairs for a little while so I could focus on getting a couple more blogs done- slowly getting caught up. Around 11, we hopped on our unloaded bikes to go on a little adventure. Bart was nice enough to show us some neat things in the area to go see, so we had a couple little destinations. First, we rode through the little town of Capitola. There was a cute little area full of shops and palm trees. From there, we rode along and were out by the ocean. We saw a lighthouse off in the distance and some really huge, well huge to us, waves rolling into the beach. All poor Joey wanted to do was go play in them- he's been talking about playing in the waves since we first saw the ocean, but the water is still a bit too cold. We found the bike path that went across the railroad bridge that Bart had told us about. As we were riding across, we could see the theme park right next to the ocean. There were roller coasters, a ferris wheel, and a whole bunch of other rides. Unfortunately it was closed, but it looked like it would have been a lot of fun. We rode past the boardwalk and then up the hill to Lighthouse Field State Park. There, we could see and hear seal rock. We also had fun watching the surfers in the water. While we were there, we got talking to a local cyclist and talked with him for quite a while. Eventually we started to head back the same route we came. We did make a little side trip to go out onto the Santa Cruz Wharf. It was pretty much just a bunch of shops and restaurants out on the pier. At the end of it though, there were openings in the pier where you could look down to see all of the seals sleeping on the boards below. We stayed there and watched them for a long time. They are so funny to watch because they just walk all over each other and laze around. At one point we even saw an otter in the water just off the pier. We watched him swim around under water near the support beams getting mussels and then go to the top and lay on his back to enjoy his meal. We could hear him crunching on the shells as he was breaking them open. He was really cute! From there, we rode back towards Bart's house. On the way, we decided to go stop at Safeway to pick up some cereal and milk for tomorrow since we had eaten a good amount of Bart's. We took a different road back in order to go to the store, and on the way saw a Little Ceaser's pizza that was having a customer appreciation $3.99 for a large pizza sale. We were pretty hungry, so we figured we would give it a shot. The pizza was pretty good! After stopping at the store for cereal and milk and riding back to Barts, we found out that he was planning to make pancakes in the am. We of course love pancakes, so we were pretty excited. Again, I went upstairs to work on blogs. As I was working, it was getting closer to 5:30. We heard the doorbell ring- Loic was here! He told us some stories about how there was a huge parade of people in the streets of San Francisco a couple nights ago after the Giants won and would be playing in the World Series. Fittingly, we got to watch the first game of the World Series tonight while enjoying some snacks, beer, and wine. Again, Bart made another awesome dinner of bbq ribs and tenderloins, rice, and another great salad. For dessert, we enjoyed the rest of the apple pie and ice cream. It was an "All American Meal" for Loic. We joked about how big Bart's grill was (which it was a completely normal size here in the US, in fact it was the smallest one he could find). Loic said that in France, that size would be considered huge! It was a fun evening. Joe an I rode 18.34 miles around the Santa Cruz area today.
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