BETTY'S BURGER'S AND THE SANTA CRUZ BEACH BOARDWALK

After my sister and boyfriend arrived in Santa Cruz, we played a round of pool. (yes, along with beautiful views, the beach house came with its own pool table). I suck at pool. Luckily, everyone was ready to go for dinner. Earlier in the day when we drive over to downtown Santa Cruz, we'd passed by a burger restaurant called Betty Burgers. I noticed it just by the smell coming off the place. So we decided to head over there for dinner.

When we arrived at the place, it was already pretty packed with family, locals and a whole lot of children (it was Labor Day Weekend after all). The place is pretty small, but is decorated with cute 1950s decor and they have a good amount of seating outside. I had Tom place our order while I went outside to stake out a table and chairs.

After we placed our orders, we waited for quite a long time. The place was packed, and they made their burgers to order. Still, after waiting about 15-20 minutes, we finally went in to check on our order. We were told it'd be out shortly and it was. Here's a photo of Tom's burger:

It was a 1/2 pound patty, and as you can see, he got it with all the toppings. I think he said it was ok, but not as good as the burgers at Al's Big Burger. Meanwhile, we got a basket of sweet potato fries to share:

I was a big fan of these fries. They were skinnier than the normal sweet potato fries, which make them cook up extra crispy, and I do love crispy fries. It was served with a side of their secret sauce, which I really didn't find all that special, and the fries were pretty great on their own.

Meanwhile, I was still so full from lunch that I got a kid size order of chicken tenders:

And what can I say, they were chicken tenders. Nothing super special, but not bad, either. I was only disappointed that they had only one type of dipping sauce - ranch.

After dinner, it was off to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. (we see ads for this on ALL THE TIME). I gotta say, it was located in a seedier part of town (if you could say that Santa Cruz has a seedy part of town) and the attractions themselves were a little run down and unseemly. But we still had a good time playing skee ball (when the machine wasn't ripping us off) , video games and just walking around.

To top off the day, Tom decided that he needed to try a deep fried twinkie (though I encouraged him not to):As you can see, it came on a stick, drenched in powdered sugar and chocolate sauce. I didn't try it, but made him let me look at the inside when he bit into it - the creamy interior had basically disintegrated during the frying process. He ended up throwing most of it out, because had been pre-fried and had been sitting there for a little while before it'd been served (not tasty for any type of fried food).

So we had a great first day in Santa Cruz. Did a little bit of relaxing and a little bit of sightseeing, with plenty more sightseeing coming up.