Justine’s Birthday Weekend.
Two weekends ago, my girlfriend and I got to celebrate her birthday. Well, kinda belated birthday? If you know me, then you know that I am big on gift giving. So, her birthday gift was in various installments for each weekend during the entire month of June. The first portion of her birthday gifts was a last minute surprise to go to the Kendrick Lamar and SZA tour. Shoutout to my cousin for hooking us up with last minute same day tickets! The second portion was dinner and mini golfing with some of our friends. I also gifted her an outfit and volleyball. The last and final portion of her gift was a day spa in Santa Cruz. Coincidentally, I had some family visiting from Hawaii and they wanted to visit Muir Woods. So, we were able to squeeze that in the next day. We had a pretty jam packed weekend.
This series of photos will cover our day in Santa Cruz and our day at Muir Woods. We started off by stopping by a pastry shop that I knew Justine would love. We grabbed some pastries and coffee before headed to downtown Santa Cruz. I’m usually not a pastry and sweet coffee, but this spot was pretty damn good.
Shot on: Fujifilm XT-30II, XF 16mm F/1.4
After we finished up our light bites, we made our way to Downtown Santa Cruz. I have never explored Santa Cruz outside of the Boardwalk. Downtown Santa Cruz is actually pretty cool. It has a bunch of places to eat, cool little boutique shops, great vintage shops, and so much more. We grabbed some food at this egg sandwich spot. Even though I’m not even a fan of eggs, I’ll eat it and give it a try.
Shot on: Fujifilm XT-30II, XF 16mm F/1.4
After we ate, we had some time to kill before our Day Spa reservation, so we decided to walk around downtown. We checked out a bunch of the shops. We told ourselves that we are gonna go back, because we didn’t have enough time to really do a deep dive of experiencing downtown Santa Cruz. We then went to our day spa reservation. The day spa was such a dope experience. We had a 70 minute couples massage and an hour jacuzzi session with our own selection of teas all while getting a great view of their Japanese inspired garden.
Shot on: Fujifilm XT-30II, XF 16mm F/1.4
After our day spa, we walked through Downtown Santa Cruz again. We checked out some witchy spiritual stores and even found this really cool witchy hammock cafe lounge that had all these trippy and hippy herbal type drinks. We finally called it a day and the headed back home to South City. We decided to take the CA1 PCH , which was kinda scary cause it was pitch black the entire way back.
Shot on: Fujifilm XT-30II, XF 16mm F/1.4
The following day, we hung out with some of my family and hung out in the North Bay. We first grabbed a bite to eat at Sol Food in San Rafael. Then we met up with a bunch of my family from all over the Bay to see our Auntie, Cousin, and Nephews that were visiting from Hawaii. After pounding a few beers and catching up, we went to Muir Woods. I have never been to Muir Woods, but its been somewhere I been wanting to visit for so long. We did a quick hike through the woods for about an hour. I was able to snap some flicks in the woods. I also picked up this really dope Banana Slug hat that I am very proud of.
Shot on: Fujifilm XT-30II, XF 16mm F/1.4
Thats a brief wrap up of our weekend. Overall it was lots of fun and a great experience. On the flip side to that, it was very exhausting doing all that adventuring. Gonna end this post here with some other pictures from the weekend. Fair warning, some might be a little on the spicy side. Enjoy, ‘til the next one.
