Lighthouse Hostel

After lingering around the Pumpkin Festival for 5 hours or so, I made my way north to the lighthouse hostel where I planned to spend the night.

I was feeling tired and a little grumpy after the festival, but my first glimpse of the hostel cheered me up instantly.

Isn't it beautiful?!

The lighthouse itself is still working, and very tiny and adorable. Unfortunately, it's not open to visitors. I imagine a hobbit family lives behind that tiny green door and wants their privacy.


The rest of the grounds are lovely as well, especially the private beach.

I spent the night in "The Fog Signal Annex" building.



My room had three bunkbeds (I got a bottom bunk, thank goodness). There were five other ladies there, who were all quite nice. They invited me to dinner with them, but I didn't really feel like socializing. Instead, I went on a hike along the cliffside--see pictures in next post.

Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival

OVERALL RATING: 2 out of 5 stars.

The incredibly long line of slow moving traffic that surrounded me on Saturday morning on my way to Half Moon Bay suggested that I was in for a real treat. However, the festival was really quite a let-down.

PROS: finding free parking (but only after circling for 10 minutes), pumpkin pie/tarts/lattes/cookies, seeing the enormous pumpkin.

CONS: enormous crowds, a lame parade (involving violently thrown candy that forced me to duck numerous times), kitschy art for sale, inflated prices.

Here's a selection of photos I took.








Final verdict: not worth attending unless you have small children, who will be impressed by the festivities, but will become exhausting quickly, dropping their chocolate ice-cream cone down the hair and back of the nice lady sitting on the ground in front of them (no, luckily, this was not me).

Week 2

It's week 2 of the diet!

This was an odd week. The first half of the week I had absolutely no appetite, and ate very little. The latter half of the week I had some bad sweets cravings, plus I ate out a couple times. The difference in calories is striking! It really makes you cringe to think about how bad restaurant food can be...

Thursday: 960
Friday: 1035
Saturday: 984
Sunday: 1240
Monday: 1665 (craving day)
Tuesday: 2930 (best estimate... ate out and regretted it!)
Wednesday: 2200 (best estimate... ate out!)

When I actually take the time to try to figure out the nutritional content of restaurants that don't post their own info, I realize that eating out even once a week is terrible for a person. But over the last year I've probably eaten meals at restaurants/events 2-3 times a week. Maybe this calorie counting will help remind me to eat nothing but steamed veggies the next time I'm invited to a restaurant!

That said, the coming weekend appears to be full of food dangers. Tomorrow I am attending an event luncheon and having dinner out with a girlfriend. Then I'm spending Saturday at a Pumpkin Festival, where there will be tasty treats all around. We'll see how things go.... I may be spending all next week in the gym making up for it!