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.
Showing posts with label california. Show all posts
Showing posts with label california. Show all posts
Friday, October 9, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
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!
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!
Hearst Castle & Paso Robles Wine Country - 3.10
First thing in the morning we made our way towards Hearst Castle up on the hill by San Simeon. It was designed by architect Julia Morgan for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst from 1919 until 1947. Julia Morgan worked on it for almost 30 years - helping Mr.Hearst realize his dream. Currently it is a National Historic Landmark, was donated to the state of California and is open to the public. There are various tours you can take up there, each one taking you through different areas of the enormous main building and other buildings in the complex.
Mr.Hearst's parents had brought the land times ago and once the parents died, William was over 50, he started to build a permanent home there. Castle is situated basically in the middle of nowhere, but he loved the area as this is where they went camping with his parents when he was little. Whole estate is about 1000 square km :) Now the castle is amazing, it is huge and it is luxurious. He incorporated different historic architectural styles, there was a private cinema, tennis courts, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, huge library and enormous kitchen with refrigerators (at that time this was luxury), 56 bedrooms (wherever there was a bed there was also a bathroom right next to it - so if there were 2 beds in a room then there were 2 bathrooms as well), an airfield and the world's largest private zoo with many exotic animals.
Castle has an impressive amount of art in it, starting from books and ending with antique ceilings, covering whole lot of paintings, furniture, carpets, sculptures and so on.
In the afternoon our wine tasting tour started. We managed to visit 7 wineries :) Here they are:
Turley Wine Cellars - specialized for Zinfandel's. Jenny likes zin's so we got to taste lots of those :)
Peachy Canyon Winery - specializing in sustainably-farmed Zinfandel, Cabernet and Rhone varietals. It was located in the beautiful Templeton gap west of Paso Robles in the Old Bethel School House dating back to 1886.
AJB Vineyards - a smaller winery, here all the wines are estate grown and produced: Viognier, Nebbiolo, Sangiovese, Zinfandel and Syrah. Estate is family owned and operated.
Donatoni Winery - another smaller winery, as they say: great trips begin with Donatoni wine :) They use grapes from the Paso Robles appellation for their wine.
Eberle Winery - they celebrate their 30 years of wine making, booklet informs me that this is one of the top 10 most award-winning wineries in USA. Here we got to go on a cave tour as well and learn a bit more about harvesting and making wine. This one was quite established and seemed to be enormous. Our wine pourer told us that there was one Estonian girl working in their winery last year :)
Tobin James Cellars - Kristy is a member of this winery so we got to do the tasting for free and got an extra list of wines to taste as a complementary. We must have done 10+ wines there :) They craft fruit intense wines: Zinfandels, Cabernet Sauvignons, Syrahs, Chardonnays, Merlots, velvety "Liquid Love" Dessert Zinfandel and many others. They had quite a wide selection of different ones.
EOS Estates Winery - very much an established one with quite a bit of beautiful gardening and a special parking lot for Porches :) They were proud to announce that their whole estate and production runs on solar power. Had some nice wines too and whole lot of merchandise.
At each wine testing there is a list of wines that are available for tasting, sometimes it is a fixed list and sometimes there is a list of options from where you can make your own selection. Usually it was anywhere between 5-7 wines, mostly red, at the end some port or dessert wine, few had also white wine available for tasting. Some wineries charged for tasting the others did not. In total there are more than 100 wineries in this wine country :) As I mentioned earlier the key is to eat crackers and drink plenty of water. Usually there were crackers on the counter so you could munch on those as well :)
Mr.Hearst's parents had brought the land times ago and once the parents died, William was over 50, he started to build a permanent home there. Castle is situated basically in the middle of nowhere, but he loved the area as this is where they went camping with his parents when he was little. Whole estate is about 1000 square km :) Now the castle is amazing, it is huge and it is luxurious. He incorporated different historic architectural styles, there was a private cinema, tennis courts, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, huge library and enormous kitchen with refrigerators (at that time this was luxury), 56 bedrooms (wherever there was a bed there was also a bathroom right next to it - so if there were 2 beds in a room then there were 2 bathrooms as well), an airfield and the world's largest private zoo with many exotic animals.
Castle has an impressive amount of art in it, starting from books and ending with antique ceilings, covering whole lot of paintings, furniture, carpets, sculptures and so on.
In the afternoon our wine tasting tour started. We managed to visit 7 wineries :) Here they are:
Turley Wine Cellars - specialized for Zinfandel's. Jenny likes zin's so we got to taste lots of those :)
Peachy Canyon Winery - specializing in sustainably-farmed Zinfandel, Cabernet and Rhone varietals. It was located in the beautiful Templeton gap west of Paso Robles in the Old Bethel School House dating back to 1886.
AJB Vineyards - a smaller winery, here all the wines are estate grown and produced: Viognier, Nebbiolo, Sangiovese, Zinfandel and Syrah. Estate is family owned and operated.
Donatoni Winery - another smaller winery, as they say: great trips begin with Donatoni wine :) They use grapes from the Paso Robles appellation for their wine.
Eberle Winery - they celebrate their 30 years of wine making, booklet informs me that this is one of the top 10 most award-winning wineries in USA. Here we got to go on a cave tour as well and learn a bit more about harvesting and making wine. This one was quite established and seemed to be enormous. Our wine pourer told us that there was one Estonian girl working in their winery last year :)
Tobin James Cellars - Kristy is a member of this winery so we got to do the tasting for free and got an extra list of wines to taste as a complementary. We must have done 10+ wines there :) They craft fruit intense wines: Zinfandels, Cabernet Sauvignons, Syrahs, Chardonnays, Merlots, velvety "Liquid Love" Dessert Zinfandel and many others. They had quite a wide selection of different ones.
EOS Estates Winery - very much an established one with quite a bit of beautiful gardening and a special parking lot for Porches :) They were proud to announce that their whole estate and production runs on solar power. Had some nice wines too and whole lot of merchandise.
At each wine testing there is a list of wines that are available for tasting, sometimes it is a fixed list and sometimes there is a list of options from where you can make your own selection. Usually it was anywhere between 5-7 wines, mostly red, at the end some port or dessert wine, few had also white wine available for tasting. Some wineries charged for tasting the others did not. In total there are more than 100 wineries in this wine country :) As I mentioned earlier the key is to eat crackers and drink plenty of water. Usually there were crackers on the counter so you could munch on those as well :)
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Pacific Coast Highway 1 - 2.10
Headed south from Carmel after looking around in town for an hour or so. The road that took us down south was a scenic highway running parallel to the coastline - amazingly beautiful drive! This road has many names, official name is California State Route 1, but it is also called as Pacific Coast Highway or simply Highway 1. Drive along the road takes you buy one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world - it was truly beautiful. I did my utter best of not falling asleep - coke helped :-P
It took us about 4 hours to get to Cambria - we stopped along the way numerous times to awe at the beauty of the coastline. Had wonderful picnic with cheese, crackers and raspberries on a cliff. Met a huge colony of sea lions hanging out on a beach :) Stared at wild zebras who are from old times when mr.Hearst let his collection of animals into the woods. Tomorrow we will try to go and visit the castle he had built. Just look at the photos, can't praise it enough with words :)
This time we started looking for a hotel earlier and we were very thorough :) Decided to stay in a small place close to Cambria called San Simeon. Dinner was awesome, American style all the way - ribs! And lots of them!
Evening was concluded with wonderful Jacuzzi :) Today was a good day! Didn't make it to any of the wineries today, but Jenny is making a list of them as I'm typing this text - I already got some hints on how to manage with all the different wines and amounts - crackers and lots of water is the key :D Wish me luck!
It took us about 4 hours to get to Cambria - we stopped along the way numerous times to awe at the beauty of the coastline. Had wonderful picnic with cheese, crackers and raspberries on a cliff. Met a huge colony of sea lions hanging out on a beach :) Stared at wild zebras who are from old times when mr.Hearst let his collection of animals into the woods. Tomorrow we will try to go and visit the castle he had built. Just look at the photos, can't praise it enough with words :)
This time we started looking for a hotel earlier and we were very thorough :) Decided to stay in a small place close to Cambria called San Simeon. Dinner was awesome, American style all the way - ribs! And lots of them!
Evening was concluded with wonderful Jacuzzi :) Today was a good day! Didn't make it to any of the wineries today, but Jenny is making a list of them as I'm typing this text - I already got some hints on how to manage with all the different wines and amounts - crackers and lots of water is the key :D Wish me luck!
Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay - 1.10
Luckily I got picked up close to 11 in the morning. That gave me plenty of time to get ready, pack and have a proper lunch. Drive to Santa Cruz was only about 45-50 minutes.
Surf city Santa Cruz was quiet. During off season there is not much activity as it seems like. Even the hand crafted carousel was not working, with the rest of the amusement park right next to the beach. Seals were working though :) There was tons of them - some playing in the water and the rest just laying around wherever they could find free spots, and if there weren't free spots then they just laid on each other :D
Luckily the weather was beautiful and just walking around the pier, beach and town was wonderful. Headed out after having lunch, down south, towards Monterey.
As expected I was in food coma all the way to Monterey Bay :) It is one of the most beautiful drives in the world and I just slept all the way through it. Jenny and Kristy promised that they won't let me sleep in the car any more :D Although tomorrow we'll get the rest of it and about 4 times as much and the best part as I was told, so no worries as Aussies say (I learned something while down there) :)
Monterey bay was great. There is this wonderful scenic route you can take in Monterey called 17 mile drive. It has one of the most famous and posh golf courses in US and even around the world on it. Check photos on more comments on the locations and information. Jenny's friend showed her the trick once on how to get most out of the scenic road - you go to all those golf club restaurants that have views to golf greens and you order some drink and snack. So we did :) Margaritas, Cosmos and other cocktails were flowing :D Arrived at the final location nicely by sunset - perfect timing on our part.
Marine life is pretty active around this area. During the day we saw whole lot of seals, sea lions and sea otters. Oh and squirrels! Plus pelicans and whole lotta other birds who I could not name :)
Last event of the evening was to find a place to stay for the night and dinner location. Decided to drive to the neighbouring city called Carmel by-the-sea. As I was informed, Clint Eastwood lives here and also has a restaurant. Didn't see him hanging out anywhere though :) Everybody being so tired from the long day, we did not look around whole lot and pretty much agreed to the first offer at one of the motels. Same with dinner :) All in all both worked out pretty nice in the end.
Surf city Santa Cruz was quiet. During off season there is not much activity as it seems like. Even the hand crafted carousel was not working, with the rest of the amusement park right next to the beach. Seals were working though :) There was tons of them - some playing in the water and the rest just laying around wherever they could find free spots, and if there weren't free spots then they just laid on each other :D
Luckily the weather was beautiful and just walking around the pier, beach and town was wonderful. Headed out after having lunch, down south, towards Monterey.
As expected I was in food coma all the way to Monterey Bay :) It is one of the most beautiful drives in the world and I just slept all the way through it. Jenny and Kristy promised that they won't let me sleep in the car any more :D Although tomorrow we'll get the rest of it and about 4 times as much and the best part as I was told, so no worries as Aussies say (I learned something while down there) :)
Monterey bay was great. There is this wonderful scenic route you can take in Monterey called 17 mile drive. It has one of the most famous and posh golf courses in US and even around the world on it. Check photos on more comments on the locations and information. Jenny's friend showed her the trick once on how to get most out of the scenic road - you go to all those golf club restaurants that have views to golf greens and you order some drink and snack. So we did :) Margaritas, Cosmos and other cocktails were flowing :D Arrived at the final location nicely by sunset - perfect timing on our part.
Marine life is pretty active around this area. During the day we saw whole lot of seals, sea lions and sea otters. Oh and squirrels! Plus pelicans and whole lotta other birds who I could not name :)
Last event of the evening was to find a place to stay for the night and dinner location. Decided to drive to the neighbouring city called Carmel by-the-sea. As I was informed, Clint Eastwood lives here and also has a restaurant. Didn't see him hanging out anywhere though :) Everybody being so tired from the long day, we did not look around whole lot and pretty much agreed to the first offer at one of the motels. Same with dinner :) All in all both worked out pretty nice in the end.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
California, San Jose - 28-30.9
Time traveling to the past was great, but I'm still recovering from it 3 days later :) Did not get any sleep on the plane from Auckland to Los Angeles. Mainly because I was watching movies non stop - my eyes were about to pop out from staring at the little screen there :) Also talking to the gal who sat next to me kept me awake. Turns out she is a triathlete and physiotherapist who works with cyclers! We covered a whole lot of useful information about triathlon clubs organization in Australia and I got so many good hints that I can apply to 21.CC :-P I have been bending my brain for a while about the possible packages and now all the thoughts started to formulate and get focused - fun stuff!
Allright, so arrival to LA was good, flight went quickly and no major hassles with that. Had 5h layover in LA :( Customs was awful like always - long lines, lots of questions, forms to fill. Oh and even worse was domestic terminal in LA. Waiting line to the security was about half a kilometer long (and I'm not joking) It went all the way from one side of the terminal to the other and it was snaked in multiple places going back and fourth about 3 times for at least 75m one way - it was absolutely mad. At least the line was moving with a steady pace, longest time standing still was probably 5 minutes when they merged multiple incoming lines. I have never seen anything like that before though :) While standing in the line I was wondering what do those people do who have phobias for such long lines :D ?
Flight from LA to San Jose - no idea how that went as I was pretty much passed out :) Not sleeping on the long flight was catching up with me and I fell asleep while walking around, pretty much :) Once arrived at the flight I was out - can't remember taking off nor landing :D
Met with Jenny at the airport, navigated together to the hotel and then on to town. San Jose has nice little downtown area. Found a nice eatery to chill at and catch up with Jenny - it was super nice to see her after long long time! Due to skipped sleep I was ready to fall over by 6pm again, going to sleep at 7 was a mistake of course as I was up and awake by 2am :D Long story short I never got more sleep and following day in class was a bit of a challenge :) As was the day after that :D
Class - on 29th and 30th I was at Scrum Product Owner course. Course was great, the whole time I kept making notes of what changes to do once I get back to the office :) Beware ;) Course was great, it was wonderful to hear about other's experiences, discussions were insightful and there was lots of good food :) Some photos are here
My evening will get exciting from now on - I just got back from the mall and will start configuring and migrating my notebook :) Tomorrow morning we are heading south with Jenny and her sister - our trip will be spontaneous, will be back in San Francisco by Sunday night. I'm not sure I'll be online anytime before that so probably no updates before Monday :)
Allright, so arrival to LA was good, flight went quickly and no major hassles with that. Had 5h layover in LA :( Customs was awful like always - long lines, lots of questions, forms to fill. Oh and even worse was domestic terminal in LA. Waiting line to the security was about half a kilometer long (and I'm not joking) It went all the way from one side of the terminal to the other and it was snaked in multiple places going back and fourth about 3 times for at least 75m one way - it was absolutely mad. At least the line was moving with a steady pace, longest time standing still was probably 5 minutes when they merged multiple incoming lines. I have never seen anything like that before though :) While standing in the line I was wondering what do those people do who have phobias for such long lines :D ?
Flight from LA to San Jose - no idea how that went as I was pretty much passed out :) Not sleeping on the long flight was catching up with me and I fell asleep while walking around, pretty much :) Once arrived at the flight I was out - can't remember taking off nor landing :D
Met with Jenny at the airport, navigated together to the hotel and then on to town. San Jose has nice little downtown area. Found a nice eatery to chill at and catch up with Jenny - it was super nice to see her after long long time! Due to skipped sleep I was ready to fall over by 6pm again, going to sleep at 7 was a mistake of course as I was up and awake by 2am :D Long story short I never got more sleep and following day in class was a bit of a challenge :) As was the day after that :D
Class - on 29th and 30th I was at Scrum Product Owner course. Course was great, the whole time I kept making notes of what changes to do once I get back to the office :) Beware ;) Course was great, it was wonderful to hear about other's experiences, discussions were insightful and there was lots of good food :) Some photos are here
My evening will get exciting from now on - I just got back from the mall and will start configuring and migrating my notebook :) Tomorrow morning we are heading south with Jenny and her sister - our trip will be spontaneous, will be back in San Francisco by Sunday night. I'm not sure I'll be online anytime before that so probably no updates before Monday :)
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