First Year Anniversary

Ahhh, our first year anniversary. We had such a fun time celebrating our first fabulous year and look forward to many more. Marriage to a great, fun, worthy man is simply the best thing in the whole world. There have definitely been ups and downs thoughout, but the ups always outweight the downs. Besides, the downs just help us to grow together in the end. And I personally think we're getting better at this whole marriage thing. Always good to improve. Well, to celebrate our anniversary, we decided to go to Pismo Beach. We had heard good things but never been there yet. Mark found us an amazing place to stay. It was a bit pricey, so we just went for one night. Besides, Mark had school and a pretty busy schedule. We stayed at the Avila Village Inn and it was tremendous! More in the pictures to follow...

First of all, the inn had free beach cruiser bikes that they let us use. We drove for about 15-20 minutes to the beach and walked around a little outdoor shopping market. It was awesome.





Avila Beach

We then drove to Pismo Beach (about a half hour away) and walked around and ate yummy seafood for dinner.

Pismo Beach sunset

We had heard of this Hot Lix place before on a special Food Network candy show and were surprised to find it in Pismo Beach. They make candy out of bugs. Yes, that's right, bugs. So we just had to go check it out, and Mark even talked me into trying some... they were only 25 cents each. Actually the chocolate covered crickets weren't so bad. They bake them so they're crunchy and then cover them in chocolate. Tasted like a really crunchy crunch bar. Gross when I started thinking about it, but not bad tasting. Mark said the chocolate covered worm was worse. I refused to try that one.

There were a few reasons why we loved our little Avila Village Inn so much.

1. It was a small inn, maybe 30 rooms. So it was really quiet and intimate.
2. The free bikes, good times.
3. They let you borrow dvd's from the lobby, so we watched Strictly Ballroom, finishing up at the very last moment before we had to check out.
4. The lobby was absolutely stunning (no pictures), with this huge fireplace and basically no one there to bug you.
5. Free cookies and free apples (neither of which we tried... fresh strawberries from the market was good enough for me).
6. Our fabulous room... it was huge and luscious and simply amazing.
7. We had a balcony, which faced the back of the hotel, rather than the common grounds like other people's rooms. It faced the secluded trees area. The bike trail was down there as well, but we felt like it wasn't super close. See the view below...

and last but not least... we had our own private hot tub out on the balcony. We definitely made use of it a few times. It was so sweet and peaceful to sit out in the hot tub and feel so alone and out in nature. Then we had a fun time using it again the next morning... we wanted to make sure we got our money's worth.

The front/side of our inn.

After checking out of the hotel, we drove over to Pismo Beach for one last visit. Unfortunately, it was actually pretty cold. I don't think we took our jackets off. But we sat in the sun on our towels and beach chairs and read for awhile. We love the beach!