Has anyone ever traveled to....

... Monterey or Santa Cruz, CA? Louis and I are thinking of going there for our anniversary trip. We are bouncing back and forth between lots of ideas right now... including the following:

*San Diego/Coronado (but the rooms are insanely expensive for July weekends)
*3 day Carnival Cruise- makes one stop in Ensenada and one day at sea. We would not be getting off the ship because of Louis's fear of the swine flu and other crap going on in Mexico right now, but we LOVE cruising, and the prices are so cheap that its less expensive to go on the cruise, all meals included *plus $100 ship credit with a deal going on for incidentals like beverages and photographs!* than the hotel stay alone in Coronado or SD
*Santa Barbara
*And Monterey and Santa Cruz. Louis has been to Santa Cruz and liked it; I"ve always wanted to go to Monterey so we would do both during our trip (depending on how close together they are. We think they are near each other?) We would fly up there and rent a car. I would also want to do a day stop in San Francisco... but again I haven't even checked a map to see how close these places are to each other. And Louis is scared of going to SF because of that huge quake that took place there like... almost 100 years ago?! He watches too much of the History Channel

Anyway, if you have been to either Monterey or Santa Cruz, did you like it? What was there to do? It would be fun to go someplace new!