Last weekend my parents came up to visit and celebrate my birthday. It turned out to be a non-stop blitzkrieg of the Bay Area.
They flew into San Jose on Thursday evening and we spent the evening just hanging out around Palo Alto. I cooked dinner at home and then we went to a favorite little Italian style cafe for coffee.
Friday morning we got up and got breakfast at a crepe place in town, then went on a little scenic drive of the are that Rachel and i like to do on our bikes. After that we went to the Thomas Fogarty winery up in the Santa Cruz mountains for a little wine tasting. Then we had lunch at one of my favorite caribbean restaurants in town before heading south to Mountain View, the place Rachel and i will probably end up living if we ever end up being able to afford a house out here (Mountain View is significantly cheaper than Palo Alto and a bit more young and vibrant community inhabited by people that work at google among other places). After some walking around in Mountain View we went to pick up my car (which had been in the shop all week), and then drove back down to San Jose to pick Rachel up at the airport as she returned from Oklahoma. We stopped my my office on the way home so i could show my parents what it is that i do everyday, but they commented on the way home that they still don’t have a clue. After arriving back home we got cleaned up and drove up to Berkeley to eat at famed Northern California restaurant Chez Panisse for my birthday, which was incredible. I’ll post a review of Chez Panisse separately so this entry doesn’t get too long.
Saturday we headed up to San Francisco at got breakfast at my dad’s favorite breakfast spot ‘in the world’, the Home Plate, a modest little place with no more than 10 tables that casually sits on Lombard street in the Marina district. After breakfast we walked around the Marina district and past Isa, the restaurant Rachel and i visited for the first time a few weeks ago. We made our way over to the Presidio, then Ghirardelli Square, and finally over to fisherman’s warf. Then we realized that we didn’t want to be hanging out in the center of goofy tourism that is Fisherman’s Warf and quickly left. On our way back to the car we stopped for lunch at Greens, a pretty famous vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco that was really good. We were a little bit flustered about having to wait an hour for a table, but once we got seated the food was well worth the wait. After lunch we returned to the car and headed over to the base of Telegraph hill where we hiked up to the top of Coit Tower. Feeling pretty exhausted we turned the car back towards home, but made a stop at Golden Gate park before jumping on 280 for the trip back to Palo Alto. Once we got back, Rachel’s aunt and uncle that live a few minutes away came over and we all went to dinner at Tamerine, easily our favorite place in Palo Alto.
Sunday we had a hearty breakfast at Palo Alto Fountain Grill, then headed over to the Stanford campus for a little walking tour. It was my parents’ first time to see Stanford, i think they enjoyed it. After the tour it was time to pack bags and take my parents back to the airport to fly home. It was a really fun weekend and im glad they came up to visit. I wish it could have lasted longer, but we got a hell of a lot done in just a few days.
