Our 1st Anniversary at Bodega Bay, CA

Since Jacob and I both love being near the ocean, we wanted our first anniversary celebration to take place somewhere coastal. We decided on Bodega Bay which we 100% did not regret.

We left around 1:00 pm from the South Bay, and with traffic, it took us about two and a half hours to drive there. The resort we chose was the stunning Sonoma Coast Villa. It is a small resort, only about 20 rooms, is secluded, child & pet friendly, nestled deep in nature, has gorgeous architecture, and is only about a 10 minute drive to the shore. The resort had such a stunning lobby area, site grounds, pool, jacuzzi, and recreation area. Upon arrival, they offered us house-baked Chex mix and some wine (Jacob and I only took the Chex mix as neither of us really drink). I took so many photos there:

Some photos around our room:

Jacob and I also brought our switch and plugged it into the TV:

For our anniversary, we also wanted a special dinner, so made a reservation at Drake’s Sonoma Coast. The restaurant itself and especially its location was s-t-u-n-n-i-n-g. It sits right at the edge of something that looks like a marshland, and in our reservation notes, you could request to have a window seat (which I did thankfully). I also noted in our reservation note that it was our 1-year anniversary, and so the very friendly waitress gave us some complimentary champagne, as well as let us in on the secret dessert menu. For appetizers, we ordered this really awesome charcuterie plate and my favorite thing on there was this CLEAR honeycomb… I forgot to ask the waitress where they got this from. I ordered a cod dish, Jacob ordered a steak, I also ordered this really beautiful garden mocktail, and the secret dessert we had was the chocolate lava cake with vanilla ice cream.

Here are all my food and restaurant photos:

I also wanted to get a photo of the inside of the restaurant lobby as well, since it had this tall ceiling with this long window that let in the goregous scenery, but there was always a host or hostess standing there and I felt awkward taking a photo. So…. I took photos of the towels in the bathroom instead to show how fancy the place was:

As the end of our meal was nearing sunset, Jacob let me head out first to take as many golden hour photos outside as I could. Here is what I ended up taking:

When we returned to the villa resort, we decided to explore a bit the upstairs room above the lobby. You have to get up there via this narrow spiral staircase, and it leads you to this super charming reading and game room with large windows. I was saying that this would be the perfect place to hang out during a rainy day:

Also, every night at 7:45 pm, the villa resort plays a movie outdoors by the fire pit and also provides complimentary smores kits ! That was super fun. There was not really anyone watching our first night there, but during our second night, since there was a family, the villa resort played The Lion King and so Jacob and I watched it and made some smores as well:

One reason why we chose Sonoma Coast Villas is because of their complimentary breakfast buffet ! Their dining room was equally as gorgeous as other parts of their site, and their breakfast buffet was very filling. For our first morning there, they had homemade tamales pie and for our second morning there they had this egg Florentine with this super yummy almond butter cake. Here is the dining area:

For our 2nd and only full day in the area, we started off with hiking Bodega Head Trail. This was actually a recommendation by Jacob’s brother as he had come here a few months prior. It was very windy, but the scenery by the ocean was very beautiful:

From the picnic table above, someone had already carved our initials into it:

For lunch, I wanted some seafood and Jacob wanted a sandwich, so we decided on The Boathouse:

Next to the Boathouse was a kite shop and a cafe called The Birds Cafe. I got a kite to fly later from the kite shop. We only walked around The Birds Cafe area as we were full. Bodega Bay was a core filming area for Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller ‘The Birds’, hence many birds references in a lot of places:

Once we got the kite, we stopped by Salmon Creek Beach to fly it. This was my first time flying a kite as an adult and probably my 2nd time flying a kite overall, so it was really fun ! The wind was also very strong that day so it was the perfect day to fly a kite:

At this point, we had been out for about six hours, so decided to head back to the villa resort, where we walked around the site grounds and I took more photos. There was this small pond hidden all the way in the back of the villa grounds, and the lighting was quite pretty:

And that was the last of my photos ! As mentioned above, we ended up watching Lion King and eating smores. The next morning before check-out, we tried to squeeze in some jacuzzi time, tried flying a kite again but there was not enough wind, and then we headed home.

Thanks for reading !