California

Last month during the April school vacation our family flew out to California for a week's vacation. It was a nice trip, although it took us quite to while to recover afterwards (due to lots of airplane trouble on the tail end-- more on that later).

We flew out to San Jose, arriving Saturday afternoon after a cramped but relatively uncomplicated flight. We decided that we would snoop around Santa Clara before checking into our hotel, so we drove out to take a look at our old house and drive around the neighborhood. Pictures:

The crepe myrtle trees we planted around the time we bought the place are huge now (I can remember when they were tiny little sticks that kept blowing over in high winds).

Amy chose a hotel right across street from the HP campus where I used to work. The hotel was a good pick-- nice amenities, and an easy walk to the Asian shopping center at the corner of Wolfe and Homestead. In an odd twist, HP has decided to sell the entire Cupertino campus to Apple (changing of the guard I suppose), and Apple now plans to tear down all the old structures and build a futuristic doughnut/ring shaped new building. ???. Ethan went for a run around the campus (a route that I've run many times). Dinner at Cafe Torre, an Italian eatery we used to frequent (food was still good).

On Sunday we rousted the kids early and headed off to Rancho San Antonio for a good long hike. As always it's a struggle to find a parking spot there on the weekends; the parking was nearly full even though we arrived there around 7:45.  We had a lovely hike: big loop starting with the so-called "PG&E" trail and then looping around to the northern section of the park ("Wildcat Loop"). Very satisfying. Pictures:

In the afternoon we relaxed around the hotel; Lydia went for a swim and Ethan amazingly still had enough energy for another run (!). Dinner at Hong Fu, another one of our old favorites.  It was a slightly "time-warp" like experience for me; the place doesn't seem to have changed at all. After dinner the kids and I went to see the "Hunger Games" movie (Amy opted out). It was good... faithful to the book in most of the ways that counted.  The casting was surprisingly well chosen; I didn't think that Woody Harrelson would be able to pull off the role of "Haymitch", but he was excellent.

Monday we checked out of the hotel early, then drove up 280 to San Francisco, then bludgeoned our way past the rush hour traffic along the Embarcadero to the pier. We took the 10:30 ferry over to Angel Island to do some more hiking.

At the pier:

Lots of sea lions hanging out at the docks (noisy too):

On the ferry:

View of Alcatraz:

View of the Golden Gate:

... and finally, the trailhead:

Another nearly perfect day-- sunny, warm but not hot, lovely breezes. Angel Island has a loop trail that leads up to the highest point on the island, then back down again-- we decided to do that first, then spend time looking at the exhibits in the small ranger's station next to the ferry. Everything was very green and lush (at least compared to the last time I was there).

Looking out over Tiburon/Marin:

Lots of shipping traffic in the bay, most of it centered on Oakland and the refineries just to the north (in Vallejo, maybe?):

For lunch we had a picnic up at the top of the hill, with fantastic views of the bay, San Francisco, and the Golden gate bridge.

The trail ran past a whole series of fields that were just carpeted with small blue flowers-- it was very lovely:

Looking down on Marin again:

After careful consideration the kids and I decided to name this plant the Pointy Purple Pillar bush (not sure what the real name is):

After lunch we hiked back to the ferry and had a little "down time"; Lydia and Ethan fooled around on the small beach there, and Amy and I visited the ranger station.

After taking the ferry back to SF and ransoming our car, we drove on to Japantown, where Amy had arranged for a room at the Hotel Kabuki. Kind of an odd place, but a great location and a reasonably comfy room. Dinner that evening at a Vietnamese restaurant, "Out the Door", on Bush st near Japantown. This turned out to be an inspired selection on Amy's part -- all of the dishes we ordered were fantastic. We all ate a little too much, but enjoyed it nonetheless. I'm almost glad that Lexington doesn't have a restaurant like that, since we would be tempted to go every week...

Tuesday was our Exploratorium day. We decided to try taking the bus; we hopped on the bus running on Fillmore st (#22) and took it north to Lombard st, then walked the rest of the way. We got to the museum shortly after it opened, although we only had about 2-3 minutes where we had the exhibits to ourselves: then the school buses that had pulled up disgorged their passengers, and we were inundated by vast hordes of middle schoolers. It was a lot of fun in spite of the crowds; there's no other science museum that really comes close (in my opinion).

This was on last section of the walk there (in the Marina District). The grey things on the side are solar panels-- cool house!

Just outside the Exploratorium:

This was one of my favorite new exhibits. Basically it's a monitor hooked up to a video camera with some sort of computer program running between the camera and the display. It takes the input video signal and converts it into a very rapid series of what looks like brushstrokes, which makes for a really neat looking picture. Wish I knew how they did it....

More stuff on the inside:

We had lunch at the museum, then made our way back by bus as well. In the afternoon Amy arranged for us to visit the Kabuki baths, which was fun. On most days the baths are single-sex, but on Tuesday it's co-ed -- you wear a bathing suit. After changing we all showered; there was a long line of Japanese style showers where you sit on a small stool while scrubbing. After that you can have your pick of the steam room, the sauna, hot pool, and cold pool. Amy and the kids spent most of their time in the hot pool I think (I spent most of my time in the sauna and the steam room). The establishment tries to keep it a very quiet an contemplative affair: if at any point you think that there is too much noise, you can walk over and strike a small gong to remind people to maintain their silence. We had a nice time overall.

In the evening we drove out to the east bay to have dinner at Chez Panisse (the cafe, not the main restaurant). It was very nice as always, although we miscalculated somewhat on the rush hour traffic and wound up arriving about 10 minutes late (we endured the hairy eyeball from the staff and eventually had an excellent meal).

On Wednesday we had been thinking about tackling Mt Tam, but I think at that point we decided it would be a little too much hiking, so we decided to drive out and explore the Marin headlands instead. It was sort of a jumble; we weren't able to make much sense of the maps, so we had to sort of jump around looking for various places to explore. Nice views of the ocean, though, and some good hiking along the rocks above.

Here we had hoped to hike all the way out to the lighthouse, but for some reason the park service had shut the trail down, not sure why:

The small brown blobs in the water are seals or sea lions-- it was fun to watch them fooling around:

On the beach (photo taken by a helpful passerby):

No sand on this beach, just pebbles:

For lunch we drove into the main part of Marin and had lunch at "Fish". Picnic-table style seating, no waiters, but the food was very good and the fish was quite fresh. Back to SF after that for some more exploring and shopping in Japantown. Spoils from our shopping trip to "Ichibankan":

All it took was one look, and I decided I had to buy this packet of Japanese chocolate treats-- clearly this is the work of a marketing genius:

Dinner that evening at a nearby pizza place. The crowd at the restaurant place made me feel old-- everyone else in there seemed to be young, hip, and well-dressed. They sipped their wine and glanced surreptitiously at their iphones while I tried to think of ways to keep my kids amused during the wait for the meal. Hmm.

On Thursday morning Amy had arranged a walking tour in Chinatown, which was interesting. It wasn't really all that much of a walking tour-- there was only a little bit of walking involved. Most of the time was spent listening to our guide, Frank, who had all sorts of stories about the Chinese immigrant experience and about how things worked in Chinatown. Visiting the food market section was fun; we saw many interesting foodstuffs (it would be great to live within walking distance of markets like that). We had lunch at a local restaurant, then walked down to Union Square to explore.

Here is Frank telling us about the history of Chinatown:

This bank apparently was one of the first in Chinatown:

More photos:

From the tea shop we visited:

Cable car museum afterwards.We found out after getting there that not only do you get to see the "museum", but the whole electrical apparatus (motors, etc) that run the cables are right there for you to look at as well (pretty noisy though):

Union Square didn't really have all that much to hold our interest; what we really wanted at that point in the trip was a bookstore, but the place that used to have a Borders had now turned into a Discount Shoe Warehouse (?!?), and we couldn't find any other fallbacks. The era of the "bricks and mortar" bookstore seems to be drawing to a close.

That evening we visited the Asian Arts museum, which is open late Thursdays. Turns out that Thursday is an ideal time to visit-- no crowds to speak of, so we had the run of the place to ourselves. We had dinner at the museum restaurant, which was actually not bad at all.

The collection at the museum is arranged in a very "linear" fashion: you take an escalator to the third floor, then work your way down along a single path or track through the rooms. The first few bits are on South Asia, specifically India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, with a heavy emphasis on the origins and traditions of Buddhism. The Buddhist theme extends into the Chinese collection, so you get a good sense for the history of the expansion of Buddhism into China and then Korea from 200 AD (ish) right up until the Buddhists were outlawed during the Tang dynasty. The Korean portions of the collection were interesting as well, especially the ceramics.

On Friday we had a nice breakfast at a local restaurant and then I drove Amy and the kids down to the pier area to take the ferry over to Alcatraz, while I drove into Mountain View to have lunch with a bunch of ex-HP friends (all of whom now work for either Google or NVidia). It was fun to catch up with everyone. After lunch Amy and gang took the Caltrain to Mountain View, where I picked them up at the train station. We checked into a hotel not too far from the airport and had a decent meal at a local Vietnamese place.

On Saturday we checked out of the hotel, returned the rental car, and made our way to the terminal... unfortunately, this was the beginning of an odyssey of sorts, as opposed to a regular day at the airport. We got onto the plane (which was supposed to leave around 12), then once we were seated we started to get announcements from the captain about "mechanical problems". This continued on for quite some time, with the prognostications becoming progressively more grim. Eventally the captain got on the PA and told us that when the plane had left Minneapolis on the way to San Jose, the guy in charge of emptying the lavatory tank had driven his truck off with the hose still attached, and that there was damage to the fittings. End result: we were told to get off the plane around 3:15 or so. Predictable scene at that point-- huge line at the ticket counter to rebook, etc. I called the Delta 800 number to see if I could get us another flight; the person I spoke with told me (eventually) that she had put us on another plane leaving the same day (late), but that I would have to get it confirmed at the ticket office. We trooped down to the main departure section, then stood around for almost two hours while the agent wrangled on the phone (again) trying to nail things down. Finally she told us that the previous agent had "made a mistake" and that the best they could do for us was a red-eye flight leaving Sunday night from San Francisco. Ouch! We rented a car again, then drove on off to check into a different hotel that the airline had arranged for us.

The rest of the weekend is kind of a blur. The hotel we stayed at was a huge place, very crowded (didn't get a terrific night's sleep), and although figured out various ways to entertain ourselves, it was mainly just a holding action until we finally drove back to the airport Sun night, took the shuttle to the SF airport, and sat down to wait.

While boarding, the gate agents mysteriously decided to confiscate Amy's suitcase (the same bag had been deemed ok on all our other flights as a carry-on, ???). I can't remember the last time I took a redeye flight from the west coast to the east coast-- it was some time back in the early 1990s I think. It hasn't gotten a whole lot more pleasant during the intervening decades; Lydia and I got a little sleep but not much (I don't think Amy or Ethan slept at all).

We landed in JFK, then sat around some more, then finally made our way to Boston (with another 40+ minute delay). In Boston: no suitcase for Amy (they had managed to lose her bag). We filled out the forms and trudged on.

Finally got home around 11am, whew. Lydia seemed ok, so we sent her off to school for the second half of the day; Ethan decided to skip the rest of his day, since he would have just had a couple of study periods. Final indignity: on Tuesday the Delta baggage guy calls at 6:15 am to say that they are going to deliver Amy's bag between 9 and 11. Eventual delivery time? 2pm.

Needless to say, it did put a "harsh on my mellow" (to borrow a California phrase) from the previous week of vacation; we were all very glad when we finally got back into the usual routines.