Day 26 - 24/09/2022 - Half Moon Bay

I have always wanted to be in the US for Halloween. Maybe it's from having watched Hocus Pocus so many times, but the decorations in front of people's houses, all the Halloween stuff in the shops, and the trick or treaters running up and down the streets always seemed like great fun. One of the things that I would change about the UK is that few people celebrate this holiday properly. But this time around I feel like I came very close to experiencing Halloween here. Inês and João are celebrating a wedding anniversary of about ten times the amount of time I've ever been able to bear sharing my living space with another human being, and so today we went to Half Moon Bay (40 minutes with no traffic, a hell of a lot more with traffic, away from Santa Clara). The restaurant they picked was Barbara's Fishtrap, a bit of an institution around here judging by the number of people in the queue outside not just as we were arriving but consistently throughout our entire meal. Thankfully for me, they do their clam chowder without dairy, so I was able to have something I definitely can't find in Liverpool: clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (the sourdough in particular was amazing!). The food was also surprisingly affordable for a state in which everything costs about ten times where it does in the UK (no, I'm not exaggerating). The weather was cloudy and foggy, which also gave the place a very autumnal atmosphere.

Something that I associate closely with Californian living is fruit picking. On my way back from LA with Joseph we passed so many farms with signs announcing that you could come in and pick your own fruit, and I think that sounds idyllic as all hell (though, as I'm writing this, I can't help but think of Mrs. Elton in Jane Austen's Emma and her weird fascination with strawberry picking and donkey rides). I was very happy to trade strawberries for pumpkins, however, and help Inês and João pick some of the weirdest pumpkins I've ever seen in my life. After all, the new Hocus Pocus sequel is coming out in just a few days, so I suppose that makes it appropriate to say: Happy Halloween, everybody!

Pumpkins at the pumpkin farm

More pumpkins!

Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl