Day in Oakland CA - 5.10

I had a day off today :) Jenny had to go to work and I had couple of option of what I could do, but I decided to take a day off. I got my computer already and all the rest of the shopping was done (and much more than originally planned) so no need to go to the mall.

I basically upgraded and transferred data to my macbook, watched whole lotta CSI :) and walked around in Oakland city center. Jenny lives just couple of blocks from the lake so that was easy :)

It was a good and relaxed day. In the evening got pizza delivery, Jenny opened a bottle of wine and we just indulged. Talked about life and just enjoyed the evening. Life's good :) Oh we watched new season of House as well! Darn I miss US TV shows! I gotta check out the streamed series and how it all works.

I have to talk about food now :) The pizza delivery was awesome - Domino's pepperoni and order of cheesy bread. Now I have no idea what they do differently here, but it is soo yummy, I tried Domino's in Australia and NZ, but nope, US one is the best. Also their Chinese deli food rocks :) Panda Express for an example has cream cheese won tons that I have not found in many places - those are my favourite, with sweet and sour cheese (none of that sticky blend stuff we got in Estonia, but good strong and runny one :) ). Let's see what have I eaten here in the past few days:
beagles/cream cheese, cheese/crackers and soda, ribs/fries and soda, burger on sourdough bread/fries, Cesar's salad, pizza, Belgian waffle with butter and syrup/English muffin with peanutbutter, huge roasted chicken salad, Chinese (basically lots of deep fried meat) and soda.

I gotta admit that the first lunch I'm gonna have at home I'm gonna enjoy eating boiled potatoes! I have probably gained 5 kilos with those few days here since all there is is fried stuff and soda (limonaad). Food here tastes good, but is so incredibly unhealthy. People eat so unhealthily here it is unbelievable. The have probably 5-6 cans of soft drinks a day. I can't wait to eat proper food again instead of this deep fried potatoes, deep fried meat and lots of greasy bread. Basically that is just what is available. It is possible to eat proper food as well, but it is just so much more complicated to get it.

Olive oil tasting & Mission San Miguel Arcangel - 4.10

Paso Robles is not only a wine country, it also has great olive orchards. We wisited one called Pasolivo. Got to taste top notch extra virgin olive oils, olive oils with spices and then citrus blended ones. One of my favourite was tangerine olive oil served with honey :) yum-yum! Got a little bottle of this oil to bring back too.

Before heading back to San Francisco we made a stop at one of the missions here - Mission San Miguel Arcangel. Missions are a big part of Californian cultrue. They started on the 17th century and were established by Spanish all the way from southern Mexico up till northern part of California. There would be a walking path from one mission to the other forming a long route from south to north, path being marked with bells on the side of the road. With time the route got more and more important and grew into El Camino Real.

Idea behind missions was to settle the area and also to educate the natives on religion. Mission is like a fortress, it incorporates the living quarters, farming and agriculture buildings and then of course the church. Here is a whole lot of more information on the matter: Spanish missions in California.

Evening continued with an interesting and not so great incident at the mall, won't go into details, but basically Kristy got couple of coupons for Limited store thanks to their incapable service. But evening did get better with a movie and a nice dinner in Oakland downtown. And of course even better with the decision of taking a day off tomorrow and turning into a couch potato for the day :D Vacations rule!