luke and i took our first vacation together in TWO YEARS this last week/weekend. i got work off to go to fresno for my baby brother's high school graduation last thursday and my boss was sweet enough to give me the rest of the weekend off. so luke and i planned a last minute lil get away to the central coast directly after we left fresno.all great in theory, but not so much in execution. we arrived in cambria midday, settled into our room at the inn, and set off to take a walk through the east and west villages.20 minutes later, we had pretty much seen all there was to see and headed back to our room. on our way home, we did a wine tasting at this cute little place where, i'm quite certain the proprietors had been "tasting" glass for glass along with all their patrons throughout the day. very entertaining. we did get a nice bottle of merlot to take home with us.the next day, we had breakfast at a place recommended to us by a friend. after enjoying our meal, we decided we were all done with exploring cambria, so we took a drive south on hwy 1, first stopping in cayoucos at a very hip coffee house called o'neills that had just installed an art display by a couple of local artists, lacking any real walls in the corrugated metal structure of the shop, constructed their own walls of plain dry wall material and covered them with some pretty awesome murals. other great paintings were also hung on those walls.after enjoying a cuppa, we went to morro bay and luke saw morro rock for the first time. finding that we were completely not in the mood for the uber-touristy scene we encountered, we drove a lap around the town and moved on. plus, that place has this awful thing they call an aquarium which is really just a shallow container smaller than a lap pool that poorly accomodates two large sealions. inhumane.we moved further down the coast to avila beach and were greeted by an awful cover band whose average age sounded about 42 years....and then we saw them. the average quickly went down to 22. horrific really. plus this town was so very southern california beach party (appealing to some, not really to me). we stayed long enough to find a public restroom, relieve ourselves and move further south on hwy 1.we next stopped in pismo beach thinking, what the heck, let's get tattoos after a late lunch. we ate at the splash cafe and then went to tiger rose tattoo to see if there were any walk-in appointments available for the rest of the day. finding that we would likely have to wait about 2 hours, we decided to just head back to cambria and perhaps order in and have a romantic evening.but on the drive back to cambria, luke suggested that we go see a movie since we never do at home. fun! i texted google and got a few showtimes. we settled on the new indiana jones which was playing in morro bay. funny enough, we discovered a tiny little theatre which was ONLY showing indiana jones on its one screen. we caught the final showing of the night. which started at 7:00. really.i was a little uncomfortable throughout the movie, but also, i couldn't stop shoveling popcorn into my mouth. ah, movie theatre popcorn. mmm...on the drive home, i still wasn't feeling so great, but i just figured it was being in the car all day and perhaps the popcorn. luke made us each a crown and coke for a nightcap when we got into our room and we settled into bed. i fell asleep pretty quickly.and i woke up almost as quickly with an awful stomach ache. it was about 4:30 am and after about half an hour, i forced myself back to sleep in spite of my tummy pains. then at 5:30 am i woke up again, unable to ignore the pains anymore. i went to the toilet and was promptly very, very sick. i actually broke a some capillaries around my eyes because i was throwing up so badly.i cleaned myself up and returned to bed. poor luke, of course, had to listen to it all since it's such a small--cozy?--hotel room. we had scheduled a tour of hearst castle for 11:20 am and at this point, i thought i had food poisoning but could sleep off the ill effects and be ready to go later that day. i took a shower to try and feel better, but then crawled back into bed. luke called and rescheduled our tour for 3:20 pm and went out to get me saltines, pellegrino and pepto bismol.i'm a lucky girl.around 2:30, i rolled out of bed, put on a hat and pulled on my shoes (i had gone into bed almost fully dressed for the day). i drove us up to the visitor center at hearst castle for fear that i might get car sickness on top of my weak stomach. i was totally optimistic that we would have a great tour, and great rest of the weekend for that matter.i forgot about the winding 5 mile drive up the hill to hearst castle in a crowded tourbus. luckily i got an aisle seat close to the front so i could keep my eyes on the road.we arrived at the tour start point and i made it through about 1/3 of the tour. then i started to feel dizzy. luke had to ask the tour guide (who was an awesome and entertaining tour guide) to get someone to take us outside. once we were escorted by another staff member to an elevator, this young and somewhat bro-ish staff member looked at me and said,"aw, you're not pregnant are you?" so now, not only am i feeling awful, but now i can't get that out of my head until i took a test to prove otherwise.i kept feeling worse and worse and finally another staff member named dustin, who i think must have been an EMT came to take us to a courtyard to await transportation back down the hill. i started to get numb in my fingers and toes. bad times. dustin took us down the hill in a van, thankfully. i'm not sure another boat-like bus ride down the hill would have been the best thing for me.once we got back to our truck, i laid down across the bench seat and luke went inside to get me a sprite. after awhile, i felt like i would be able to survive the short drive back to cambria. when we got back into our room, i went directly into bed and tried to sleep it off. but i was freezing.so, i sent luke to take a walk and go enjoy himself as best as he could. i figured i now had a fever and wasn't suffering from food poisoning as i thought, but the stomach flu.luke brought me back some food and i took about 3 bites and took a swig of pepto. the rest of the evening was spent watching the princess bride and stand by me. my fever broke around 2 am.checkout was at 11am the next morning, so we got up, showered, packed our things and checked out. we grabbed a breakfast to go and got on the road. we did enjoy a lovely but winding drive north on highway 1. the ocean was almost hawaii blue in some areas. los padres took our breath away and big sur was lovely. but i did have to ask luke to drive slowly through the curves because my stomach was still weak. when we finally arrived home, it was hotter in santa cruz than any of the places we visited the whole weekend. we unloaded and i took a nap.i definitely got some much needed rest and lots of time with luke on my 5 days off, but not at all in the way i imagined. what a bummer.
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