After our honeymoon, we stayed in San Diego for a day to spend some time with family and pack everything up. The next day we headed on our roadtrip up the coast to our new home! We decided to take about 5 days to drive up so that we could enjoy the drive and make a lot of stops. It was my first time driving up up the coast, which I have always wanted to do and I LOVED it!! Nate had been before and knew a lot of good places to stop. On the first day, after only driving 1 1/2 hours, we made our first stop, Cafe Rio! Then we stopped to visit John, Jill, Marshall, & Grandma Janie. We had a nice visit with them and saw the sunset over the ocean near Santa Monica Pier, it was beautiful!!



From there we drove to our first hotel. The next day, our first stop was Solvang, a little Danish town that was founded by a group of Danes in 1911. It was the cutest town, all of the buildings looked like they were right out of Denmark!




There were a ton of cute little bakeries, chocolate shops, little boutiques, and restaurants. We got some delicious chocolate covered honeycomb from one of the shops. Then we HAD to get some Aebleskivers for breakfast/lunch. They were so good and HUGE!!! I think I ate 5 of them and then felt like I was going to explode, that dough definitely expands in your stomach!! They had powdered sugar and fresh jam on them, so good!!



Our next stop was San Simeon beach. We had a little picnic there and walked out on the pier. The water was so clear and bright turquoise, it looked like Hawaii!! (Except it was probably 30 degrees colder!!!) We would love to go back there sometime to kayak!



After the beach, we went to Hearst Castle, which was just right across the street. Hearst Castle is a huge mansion that was built from 1919-1947 for William Randolph Hearst. Hearst built the nation's largest newspaper chain. During the 1920's and 30's, Hearst had many famous guests at his mansion, including Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Charles Lindbergh. The castle has 56 bedrooms, 61 bathrooms, 19 sitting rooms, 127 acres of garden, a movie theater, an airfield, an indoor and outdoor pool, and the world's largest private zoo!!!

We went on the bedroom tour, which we heard was the best one to go on. My favorite part was the beautiful,intricate architecture and all of the beautiful paintings and statues. The total worth of art in the castle is estimated to be $15,000,000 .





Next, we stopped at a nearby beach with a ton of elephant seals! I have never even heard of those before and it was so cool to see a whole beach covered in them! They were gigantic and we saw a couple of them fighting!



Then we were on our way to our hotel. We stayed at a hotel right on the beach! It was so nice to be able to fall asleep to the sound of the ocean again!