Tuesday, April 15, 2008

California Trip Part 2 (Days 1 and 2)

Day One- Arrived late in San Jose and Casey picked us up at the airport. This is the woodsy area on the route to Casey's house in Woodside... actually not his house...he lives in on top of a rich guy's garage in the mountains. This pic of the drive in the mountainy area turned out well.We had a splendid meal of frozen pizza - baked fresh for us by our host - and old fashioneds. MMmm...pizza. mmmmm....booze. He entertained us with guitar serenades much like the native hippies do. Good local flavor.










Day 2: Friday morning we saw Casey off to school..... Roxanne packed his lunch and I gave him his milk money. Before he went in to give his talk, Roxanne wiped the dirt off his face with some spit on a napkin...




We then proceeded on a self guided tour of the Stanford campus... This is where we got coffee. All the buildings on Casey's side of the campus are from the future... whereas the main campus is definitely from the past (a beautiful past I might add).there is a Rodin sculpture garden and a museum adjacent.


this is the "Gates of Hell" sculpture.


We toured the chapel (no pics inside please) and went to the book store for a souvenir....



This is us at a cool fountain by the bookstore


We were relaxin' and maxin' on the beautiful day.....BTW - has anyone seen this water bottle? We seemed to have forgotten it somewhere in Cali....











Then it was off to the big city - San Francisco






















jack got some bubble-tea in China Town











Here are some chinese pigs on a blanket.





No visit is complete without a visit to the Golden Gate Bridge








This is the Grace Cathedral..... The Decemberists one of our favorite bands wrote a song about it, Grace Cathedral Hill. Apparently there is a huge labyrinth in this church as well. They must be big on the west coast...














Next Casey took us to a bath house... despite both of our wishes... just kidding... it was the ruins of an ancient bath house on the sea shore... very beautiful!!!






























Below is Casey trying to get me to go to the bathhouse and me saying no... with beautiful views in the background...


After the bath ruins... We headed back south into the Mission district to hang out with our friends Olivia and Chris. There we enjoyed hanging out in their new apartment, and soon enough more ex-wisconsinites arrived. David and Marta and Dipa!!!




We all hiked on down to a fancy indian restaurant called Dosa. Here is all 8 of us preparing for our feast.


The food was quite excellent as you can see from Roxanne's plate.
After Dosa, we took cabs back home and partied in Chris and Olivia's apartment for the better part of the night! It was so much fun and only the first full day of the trip.



Later we will blog about our trip to wine country and finally Santa Cruz! Here is a sneak peak though... On a street corner we spotted this dude doing what appeared to be Tai Chi, but upon further inspection we saw he was just slow dancing with himself!?! How odd....only in California... I am so glad we got it on tape!!!



2 comments:

dwstaple said...

The 'Mystery Spot' bumper sticker on the car next to us really complements that guy's slow dance.

casey said...

hey jack,
i have your bottle. i will send it to you.
Thanks for coming out to visit. i had a great time.