- A travel guide for visiting Santa Cruz in California.
I'm Chris, this is Topher.
This is Yellow Productions.
We do travel guides that are fun, informative, entertaining
and in this video we're going to be telling you
everything you need to know
if you're planning a visit to this city.
First, we'll start with some general information
about Santa Cruz.
We'll start with 'Where is Santa Cruz located?'
Well its located, if you look over here,
right on the bay.
This is the northern tip of Monterey Bay.
Monterey, California just down that way.
We're also 32 miles south of San Jose,
about 70 miles south of San Francisco.
But its over this kind of mountain range to get here
and so it keeps Santa Cruz kind of feeling like
a little world of its own from the rest of Silicon Valley.
But lets talk about major attractions.
We'll start at the first one
then I'll come back for some tips.
This is the number one attraction in Santa Cruz.
This is the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.
Its been rated one of the best, if not the best,
ocean front board walks in Northern America.
Its like an amusement park right on the beach.
This is a pretty cool place,
its been in lots of different movies.
Its been open since 1907.
If you're coming to the boardwalk though,
make sure to check to make sure its open.
Pretty much every day in summer,
just certain weekends in the winter.
You know what, I really like the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.
Why? Its just so much fun.
Little kids or big kids,
I'm definitely in that big kid category.
In addition to the rides, there's also food,
there's like corn dogs and pizza.
This place sells saltwater taffy.
I don't know what it is about saltwater taffy
and like boardwalks, but you gotta have that.
Hey look up here, look, look, look up in the air.
That's the Santa Cruz Giant Dipper,
that wooden rollercoaster, there they go down.
And I love to here the screams and that sound,
so if you're truly an adventuresome rider
definitely check that out.
These types of wooden roller coasters
were hallmarks of beach boardwalks back in the day.
Very few of them remain,
so little piece of history right here.
I think the most creative of their games here
is called 'Stinky Feet'.
You sit on what looks like a toilet
and you use the squirt gun to squirt the stinky feet
of that guy in the bath tub.
When you're done exploring the Santa Cruz Boardwalk,
another big attraction just over this way,
its the Santa Cruz Wharf.
This, its a really big pier and its got restaurants on it,
its got shops on it, gift shops.
You can actually take your car out there and park
on that really big pier.
Wharf.
Santa Cruz, though, is probably most famous
for being a beach town and for the beach.
Now we're here in the winter,
so this might not look very appealing,
there was a big storm and all this wood just washed up here.
But if you come here in the summer
this is like a mob scene.
Everybody from the Bay Area comes out here
because the Bay Area San Francisco
doesn't really have a lot of wide, sandy beaches.
Certainly the one in front of the boardwalk is good,
but there's actually a lot of beaches here
and what is Santa Cruz known for?
Its nickname is called "Surf City".
"Surf City" because back in the 1800's
three Hawaiian princes came to Santa Cruz
and introduced surfing to the US mainland for the first time
right here in Santa Cruz.
I will point out though, that if you are coming to
Santa Cruz to surf, while the surf is considered good,
it is not warm, this is definitely wet suit water
pretty much all year round, so,
bring your rubber to keep yourself warm.
So, another thing that Santa Cruz is known for
in addition to being Surf City,
one of their motto's is, "keep Santa Cruz weird".
They seem to have motto's and names like other cities,
Surf City, like Huntington Beach, keep Santa Cruz weird,
like keep Portland weird, but Santa Cruz is pretty weird.
This is one of the hotels here, the Hotel Paradox,
it's pretty weird, is it an upscale boutique hotel,
or is it a renovated motel?
I don't know, but this is where we stayed when we were here,
if you want to see how weird this hotel is,
you'll find the link in the description below,
or at the end of this video,
but what else is weird about Santa Cruz, well,
there's tons of Artists that live here,
there's lots of weird art,
I feel like the primary mode of transportation in Santa Cruz
is by skateboard.
The University of California Santa Cruz, their mascot
is the banana slug, that's right
and I picked up this newspaper in Santa Cruz,
it's the Santa Cruz Comic News.
That's pretty weird.
They don't need like, writing for the news,
you can just read comics for the news,
I mean, it's weird but it's kinda cool.
A really interesting attraction in Santa Cruz
is to visit the Mystery Spot.
Why?
It's a gravitational vortex
that makes everything lean just a little bit.
Admission to the mystery spot is a bargain $8,
but I will tell you if you're coming here,
book your tickets online or reserve ahead of time,
cus it gets really, quite busy.
It's about a 45 minute tour and for eight bucks,
how can you go wrong?
They do charge five dollars for parking,
there's ample parking and when you're done,
they give you a free Mystery Spot bumper sticker
and they say what do you do if
you don't have a car to put it on?
Well, there's plenty of other cars in the parking lot
to put that bumper sticker on too.
This one has a lot of them.
So, they end the tour by trying to explain
the theories behind this mystery.
Could it be aliens, could it be magma,
could it be a gravitational vortex?
You know what?
The tour guide didn't know.
What did we pay eight dollars for?
Do you guys know, I'm curious?
Do you think it's an optical illusion,
or some other force?
Oh. By the way, here, let me show you this way.
There's also this hiking path that I'm on right here
and it's just on the other side of the hill
from the Mystery Spot.
You can do this for free when you're done
and it's just, it's neat to come here,
because it's like, this cool redwood forest
and where I'm from, there aren't a lot of redwood forests.
One pro tip if you're coming to the Mystery Spot,
whatever the forces are that are here,
cell phones do not work, so if you need Google Maps
or things like that, make sure you get some offline maps.
Don't expect to call an Uber from here,
because Uber can't hear you,
this is probably a place to bring your own car
and that road to this parking lot, it's about a half mile,
dirt, really lousily paved road,
you really won't want to be walking it
and you probably want to leave your nicely polished Ferrari
at home.
For a really unique experience in Santa Cruz,
ride the Roaring Camp and Big Trees Steam Train,
it's pretty...
I am on it right now and why would you ride this train,
well they've got two,
they've got one that takes you around the red wood forest
and they've got a second one that'll take you down
to the boardwalk in Santa Cruz,
but I'd recommend this train,
the one that goes through the trees,
it's an hour and a half train ride
and it costs a little over $30,
you spend 10 minutes at the top
and this is the steepest steam train in North America
and they tell you about the redwood,
the conductor, right there, take a look at that conductor.
- State, to about 1000 times its own volume.
- If you do decide to ride the Steam Train and Roaring Camp,
I have two tips for you, the first one, reserve online,
they do sell out, when we were here,
two of the trains sold out, so if you're just showing up,
well, you might not be able to ride a train for a while.
My second tip for you is, they have three types of cars,
closed in cars, cars with little tent roofs
and ones that are open air, try and get in the open air car,
because you'll be able to see the canopy above the best.
If for some reason you can't get in the open air car,
well then try and sit in the corners of the car,
the front or back, cus you'll be able to take pictures
the best from that vantage point.
After your train ride, if you'd like
to get a little bit more up close and personal
with the redwood trees, well just down the other side
of the tracks from the main station,
is the entrance to the Henry Cowell Redwoods Park,
you can go hiking over there, you have to pay parking
if you park over there, so pay here once
and when you're done just walk on over to the Redwoods Park.
I'll see you there.
So, I mentioned the trees are big, do you see this tree?
This is the trunk of a 2,200 year old redwood.
That is impressive.
By the way, did I say Santa Cruz was weird?
Come here and did I say they have a lot of banana slugs?
I mean, not just they have a lot of banana slugs around,
but they even put them on the sign right there.
Look at that!
Banana slug.
So this state park with the redwoods,
it's actually a rainforest, not a tropical rainforest,
but a temperate rainforest, here in Santa Cruz,
they get over 100 inches of rain per year,
that's quite a bit and each one of these trees
drinks like, 500 gallons per tree, it drinks a lot of water,
from the roots system, from the bark
and also from the actual branches and the leaves,
from the fog that is so prevalent here in the Monterey Bay.
One of the best times to visit, is right after it rains,
it is a rain forest and so,
you'll find a lots of the streams flowing
and a lot of the rainforest activity.
But I'll point out it is cold here,
because it's not really sunny, well it's sunny right here,
but it's not sunny right here and most of this.
You'll want to bring some warm clothes,
cus it's 10 to 20 degrees colder in the rain forest
than it is outside in the sunny parking lot.
Oh!
And it's muddy too so, bring some shoes
that you don't mind getting too yucky.
Santa Cruz already feel like a world away
from San Francisco or San Jose,
but you come into the rainforest
and it's like a whole 'nother world away.
Actually, it feels kind of like
falling into maybe, a story book.
Okay, I know I showed you a fake slug earlier,
but come in right here and look at that,
the banana slug.
Look how big that banana slug is,
that's why they call it a banana slug,
cus it is like, nearly the size of a banana.
That's my hand right there.
Nice to meet you banana slug, should I pet him?
No, I'm not gonna do it.
If you're looking for nightlife in Santa Cruz,
well a great neighborhood for that is Capitola By The Sea,
there's all these bars and restaurants
that basically look out here on Capitola Beach.
This is also a great place to have those views
of the whole Monterey Bay down to Monterey
and then if we swing over this way,
Capitola has its own Wharf,
though this one's a little bit smaller
than the Santa Cruz wharf,
they still call it a Wharf,
cus there are cars driving on it,
few restaurants down at the end,
but what's really picturesque
if you love Instagram and pictures
is the Venetian right here, the Capitola venetian,
this housing development.
I love that each one looks like a different color,
kind of looks like the houses in Mirano, Italy,
which is right outside Venice if you've ever been there.
If you're looking for some place in Santa Cruz
to do some interesting shopping,
check out downtown Santa Cruz, it's here on Pacific Avenue
and there's some interesting shops, in particular this one.
It's called the Sock Shop and Shoe Company,
this store started like, 20 or 30 years ago,
it started the sock craze,
that's taken the country by storm.
Everybody thought they were crazy, but I said right,
Santa Cruz is all about keeping it weird,
so these people are like, "yeah",
Santa Cruz, people will totally buy some interesting socks
and if you wanna know what their number one selling sock is,
it's socks with two sea otters holding hands.
Awww.
If you're looking for Coffee, just down this way,
there's a Coffee shop called Verve.
It's a Santa Cruz original Coffee shop
and if you're looking for Pizza by the slice,
there's a Pizza place on this street called Pizza My Heart
and I'm not saying that Pizza is the best,
but for $7 you can get a tee shirt and a slice of Pizza,
so that's a great souvenir to bring back,
cus it says, "Pizza My Heart, Santa Cruz"
and you'll fill up your billy.
Your billy?
You'll fill up your belly too.
Also, if your travels bring you
to the San Francisco Bay area,
definitely consider a day trip, or maybe even a few days
to Santa Cruz to kind of feel a little bit more laid back,
alternative, natural lifestyle.
Well, we hope you enjoyed this video.
If you enjoyed this video and you're in the bay area,
maybe you want to take a day trip to Napa, Napa.
It's just on the other side of San Francisco,
you can check out this video right here,
maybe on the right here,
find links in the description below.
We won't say goodbye,
because we'll see you in the next video.
- See you!