There's No Place Like Home! But Seaside was pretty Close!

Well I'm home again. For those of you that didn't know I've been AFK (Away from Keyboard) since Thursday morning. I was in the beautiful city of Seaside, California staying at the beautiful, luxurious totally comfortable Embassy Suites pictured here. It looks exactly like that.

Before I show you more pics I did want to mention that in my previous post I used some chat lingo and I wanted to translate for you now.

AFK of course is Away from Keyboard.
BRB is Be Right Back.
LOL is Laughing out Loud.
AAS is Alive and Smiling.
TTFN is Ta Ta for Now.
H&K is Hugs and Kisses.

My sister Lisa is a District Secretary for our local cemetery and the reason we went to Seaside is that she had to attend the CAPC Annual Conference, for the California Association of Public Cemeteries. My wonderful sister chose to take me as her date. We left on Thursday as we had to be there that evening for a "Meet and Greet" at the hotel. After that we went out to dinner with her boss and his wife and two members of the board and their wives. We went to the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. in Monterey.


When we arrived it was still daytime outside and this is the view from our table.

Here's a picture of the nicest group of people EVER! I had such a great time with them. They were so much fun!

From the left beginning with the man in the red shirt; Bill Prout (board member) and his wife Kathy (Mayor of Shafter); Beeb Anderson wife of board member David Anderson pictured right across from her. Vaughn Unruh wife of Tim Unruh (Cemetery Manager, my sisters boss) and Tim Unruh; then that's me peeking out way in the back on the right and my sister Lisa then David Anderson.

I just can't say enough kind words about these people, my sister is so blessed to work with them and they are so blessed to have her!

Then we went back to the hotel for the evening, here's some pictures from the hotel room, this was the view we had.

Some pictures of our room which was amazingly confortable. The staff in the whole hotel was great. I would highly recommend staying at an Embassy Suite next time you need a great hotel!

The next day, Friday, my sister had to attend the conference and I was on my own so I set out early with my Starbucks Coffee and three Vanilla Bean Scones. I know...lots of carbs, but hey! I was on Vacation! I decided to drive North on Hwy 1 just to explore and see what was out there. What was out there was a gorgeous drive! Unfortunately because I was driving I didn't have opportunity to stop and take photos, but there was one time that I glance out the passenger side window and I saw this beautiful field being plowed by a big green tractor and less than a mile away you had a gorgeous view of the ocean and the waves breaking against the rocks. I envied that tractor driver...trust me!

I headed back to Seaside planning to do some shopping at a shopping center I saw on the way up with a Ross, Marshalls, Target and Cost Plus World Market, but my sister called and said she was done for the day so I picked her up and we headed to Cannery Row in Monterey.

We walked around looking in all the little shops but I still hadn't had lunch so we decided to go to El Torito. I know...here we are on the coast with lots of fresh seafood restaurants and we go to a Mexican food place. What can I say, we love chips and salsa and margaritas more than anything. Plus they had an El Torito right on the water with a great view from our table...plus did I mention Margaritas?

Here I am outside of El Torito. As you can tell it was pretty windy.

Here's my sister Lisa...

And here are the both of us together...

Here's a picture of us in the restaurant waiting for our drinks and food.

A view from our table at the ocean. We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful state.

That evening the CAPC had planned a costume event. The theme was "The 70's". We headed back to the Embassy Suites so my sister could get into her costume and we could do her hair and makeup. I'll follow up with a post tomorrow with photos and stories from that evening.

The next day, which was a Saturday my sister again had to attend the conference and I had made plans to meet my daughter in Gilroy, CA so we could do some shopping at the largest Outlet Mall I had ever been to. The Gilroy Outlet Stores. We had so much fun traipsing in and out of all those stores. Gilroy also has a Home Goods and I now know I love that store...my daughter loved it as well. Plus she brought my sweet little grandpuppy Chorizo. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures :-(

I headed back as that evening was the Awards Banquet for the CAPC and I wanted to be able to have time to dress and touch up the makeup and hair. The food was great. We had Pork Loin Roast with Roasted Baby Red Potatoes and Broccoli. Dessert was a piece of Opera Cake. I didn't take pictures but it looked something like this. 

None of us had ever had this type of cake. It was good, but I would have rather had Creme Brulee! According to Wikipedia, Opera Cake is a type of French cake. It is made with layers of almond sponge cake (known as Joconde in French) soaked in coffee syrup, layered with ganache and coffee buttercream, and covered in a chocolate glaze. The cake was popularized by the French pâtisserie house Dalloyau.

We returned home on Sunday but we took our time driving and we took the 17 mile drive and visited Carmel and downtown Salinas before finally heading home. I'll post pictures of that later on the week also.

This was one of the best vacations I've had in a long time. The past two years I've used my vacation time for surgery for Thyroid Cancer and also for Radiation Treatments...so it was nice to take some time off and actually visit somewhere and have a great time.