Soif Wine Bar & Merchants in Santa Cruz, CA. Sublime farm-to-table cuisine. We’ll make a point of dining here whenever we’re in Santa Cruz visiting the Young Baker while she’s attending UC Santa Cruz.
Above: Panko Crusted Oysters with Remoulade
Below: Pan Seared Scallops with Peas and Fava Beans in a Meyer Lemon and Mustard Sauce
The tight two-lane, winding road that is Hwy. 17 to Santa Cruz is at once exhilarating if you’re channeling Danica Patrick yet intimidating if you’re accustomed to the parallel grid that epitomizes the multi-lane construction of most of the roads in So Cal. When we arrived at the Hampton Inn, just as you enter town and the highway becomes Ocean St., I was ready to check in and start chilling the bottle of 2007 St. Clement Sauvignon Blanc that I had purchased at Cellar 360 in Ghirardelli Square specifically with a welcome-to-Santa Cruz afternoon aperitif in mind . But first I had to see just how far down Ocean St. was the ocean and show Chloe the famous Beach Boardwalk amusement park area; we were a few miles away but nature was calling and a comfy bed was beckoning my teen so sightseeing would have to wait.
I opted for Hampton Inn because I could use Hilton points and I (we) have done many one-nighters when all is required is a clean room, comfy bed, and breakfast the next morning at a reasonable price. We checked in and my teen crawled into bed and was snoozing in minutes (the curvy road had prevented any earlier zzz’s). I promptly located the ice machine, began chilling the vino, and decided to explore the town and locate a market for some munchies. Just so happened that there was a Trader Joe’s – my fave – and I bought some pretzel thins, seeded flatbread, gouda cheese, and a sharp cheddar with stilton. After checking out the local color – headed back to the hotel for happy hour.
Since this trip has been stretched out like a studio, summer blockbuster series (or maybe you’re a new reader 
), allow me to refresh your memory as to its purpose; college tours: 1. University of San Francisco and 2. University of Santa Cruz. Based on what we had seen online and read in the ONE college guide that we purchased, Fiske Guide to Colleges, UCSC was my teen’s preliminary top choice due to the fact that it has a strong Linguistics department and, as of this summer, that is what she had decided she was interested in – specifically Language Studies which combines Linguistics and concentration in a language, in her case, French.
Roused my teen out of bed at 8:30 the next morning so we could head out to the UC Santa Cruz campus and possibly get on the 10:00 bus tour as a standby (all tours for August were already booked when I checked online in mid July). No luck getting on the tour – everyone showed up! All the folks that didn’t get on were given an upbeat, informative presentation by a student working in the visitor center and among the materials was a map designed for self-tours.
We ended up spending nearly four hours on the campus and I’m sure a more thorough look at the campus then if we had gone on the bus tour because we actually parked the car and walked around several of the ten individual colleges, the sports complex and fitness center, the Baskin School of Engineering, the outdoor Festival Glen theatre where Shakespeare Santa Cruz was performing that evening, and visited Linguistics department where we had a 1:00 appointment with a department advisor. We also stopped at the bookstore to buy a tee shirt with the banana slug mascot and meandered into areas like the back parking lot of Lick Observatory as a result of wrong turns.
In the final analysis, UC Santa Cruz is definitely my daughter’s top choice now. The campus is situated in a spectacular setting between the Pacific Ocean and redwood forests. As with UC Santa Barbara, the joke is that this may be the only time in your life where you’ll have an ocean view, but my teen fell in love with the residence hall set into the redwood forest.
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On our recent quickie trip to San Francisco and Santa Cruz we had only one night and one day in each city so it was necessary to maintain somewhat of a schedule in order to tour two universities, which was the purpose of the trip, and do a little sightseeing to get a feel for each city. My challenge, which I chose to accept, was to wake my teen at 8:30 a.m. so that she could be ready to leave by 9:30 a.m. for Day 2 and Day 3, AND to keep her from getting too comfortable when we returned to the room to change and/or recharge before going out again during the day.
Knowing that we were able to experience a small part of SF, I had asked my teen what she wanted to see in particular and Chinatown and the Golden Gate Bridge were her picks. We had visited SF about 7 or 8 years ago but she didn’t remember much about the trip. So off to Chinatown to have an authentic lunch at Oriental Pearl (I asked the bellman for directions and a recommendation). Walking along Grant Ave., the commercial center of Chinatown, buildings with Pagoda-style architecture are contrasted by glimpses of high rise office buildings of the Financial District and the Trans America pyramid soaring overhead. We found the restaurant easily and along the way took note of some shops to visit after lunch.
USF is located near Golden Gate Park and we could see the infamous San Francisco fog rolling in as we neared the campus. The area was totally enveloped and the temperature had fallen at least 10 degrees as we arrived for the 2:00 p.m. admissions presentation. I still had my lightweight mesh hoodie on, but Chloe had left her sweatshirt in our room. The presentation was not inspiring and my teen, having already decided that this school was not for her, wanted to leave. I pointed out that we didn’t come all this way to not take the tour and hopefully it would be more interesting hearing about the school from a student’s perspective. She spent the hour hugging herself to keep warm and with my arm around her, alternating sides, to block the wind.
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