• Breakfast at a Mexican supermarket

    2018年4月8日, アメリカ ⋅ ☀️ 13 °C

    We were considering having fried chicken and waffles for breakfast, as there's a really good place for it in Oakland, but we decided to spare Seamus's stomach, and go to a nearby Mexican supermarket for some pastries instead. In the end we weren't super kind to his stomach anyway, as a random lady in the supermarket told us her favourite tamales were the cheese ones (she just saw us looking around :D), and as we've never tried tamales before we thought we had to buy some. We didn't actually really know what they were, just knew the name. They are some kind of corn paste (called masa) wrapped in corn husks and steamed. And of course the put different fillings inside too, we tried the cheese and pepper one, and a pork one. We also walked away with some kind of deep fried tortilla that we tried in store and found delicious (they are very similar to Indian) and a huge tub of guacamole, to eat later.もっと詳しく

  • Jamaican jerk chicken

    2018年4月7日, アメリカ ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C

    Even though Seamus's stomach still needed a rest, I could not resist stopping for Jamaican jerk chicken on the way home. We decided that he can eat non spicy food I moderation, so we ordered quite a few sides. I had a plate of spicy chicken with some amazing sauce to dip it in, and fried plantanes, mac and cheese, collard greens (these tasted kind of like kelkáposzta, but sour and spicy - Seamus wanted to try them because apparently rappers talk about it a lot in songs) and some rice with beans which was made with coconut milk and was delicious. The photos manage to make it look bland, but it tasted really good. It also gave us a chance to look at the other side of Palo Alto - Evi says it's the weirdest controversial place, where a few streets distance you have the tech companies, hiper wealthy houses, and the dodgiest neighbourhoods as well. The chicken place was not in a scary neighbourhood or anything but it definitely did not look like a place where Google employees would live (and a few houses down a house had both a cop car and an ambulance in front of it which is not the best sign :D)もっと詳しく

  • Googleplex

    2018年4月7日, アメリカ ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C

    The only good thing about the voting location being so far out of town was that it was actually close to the original Google headquarter campus, so we dropped in to take a look and walk around. It was nice on a Saturday evening, there were only Asian families with kids, a few workaholics and us. It really is a big place with multiple bus stops for their special Google buses, bicycles just there for everyone to use, a volleyball Court, a pool,... And these were just a few random stuff we spotted on our own, not walking around the whole thing, or going inside buildings.もっと詳しく

  • Voting in the Hungarian elections

    2018年4月7日, アメリカ ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    We managed to move our car rental pickup to en earlier date, so that we could drive down south waaaaay out of San Francisco so I could vote. I ha e no idea why they decided to put the voting station here. The entire office building seemed completely empty, and the receptionist guy seemed to know immediately where we wanted to go. The 3rs floor had multiple Hungarians sitting on the corridors telling us to go this way or that until we found the room. Then I was given the wrong voting papers and an envelope, and I went inside the only voting booth there was.もっと詳しく

  • Berkeley uni campus

    2018年4月7日, アメリカ ⋅ ⛅ 14 °C

    We visited Evi's alma mater out of necessity - to drop off an amazon package, but it was really cool and interesting to visit. We first drove in through a neighbourhood of student housing and frat houses - with Evi pointing out which ones had the best parties back in her day. The houses looked enormous and really fancy and had the traditional big Greek letters on them! Then we walked around the actual university buildings, of which there were a ton of course. It is a different system in the US, where your first 4 years are your undergraduate studies, and everyone has the same base classes, and you get to try out lots of other things until you figure out what you'd like to learn. After that you do you graduate studies, where you would actually become a lawyer for example.
    After this we went to a cute waterside German place for lunch, as Santo was allowed to be o the terrace there with us. They seem to have quite strange rules about dogs in restaurants, where tons of place have signs about no dogs allowed, and they make it seem like they have no chance to do it differently because of health regulations. On the other hand there are places where you can take your dog, so the regulations can't be so strict after all...
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  • Oh we just walk the dog here usually

    2018年4月7日, アメリカ ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C

    Saturday morning we had some eggs for breakfast at home, and then went to walk Santo in some park about 15-20 minutes from the house. It was not what we expected at all - this random park (which is not a national or even state park, only regional) was gorgeous and full of redwood trees and actual hikeable trails. It was actually a better experience than the Muir Woods National park where we had to pay to get in. Seamus was itching to go mountain biking here, and even to me it looked like a nice place to do that! After the previous days rainfall there were waterfalls where usually there is not even water at all.もっと詳しく

  • Rain rain rain, beer beer beer

    2018年4月6日, アメリカ ⋅ 🌧 16 °C

    Today there was a storm warning for the heaviest rainfall this year, what that translated to was just one day of medium but constant rain! We used this as an excuse to walk around lake merrit get completely soaked and then eat Chinese soup and a lot of beer. We walked through Chinatown which is actually much cooler than San Franciscos Chinatown with the only residents being Chinese and visited a restaurant that only had Chinese written outside! They had a great lunch special with loads of dishes so we each got a large bowl of soup full of noodles and dumplings. It was way too much food for us so put us in a bit of a coma. Then we walked a few blocks to the district full of breweries - there are at least 20 cool craft beer brewers in oakland alone with lots of cool different beers, we went to a few of those and started to get quite tipsy so tried curing ourselves with some deep fried pickles.

    After the deep fried pickle madness we met up with Evi and Hugo in a very cool lakeside restaurant that looked pretty fancy. Luckily it was happy hour so we got gourmet burgers, beer and oysters for almost the same price as we spent at fast food places! To recover from the fanciness we then went to a super dark dive bar and drank American whisky and meszcal Seamus thought it still wasn't as good as Scottish whisky :D but he is a snob

    Then we went home and Seamus's stomach had given up after the brutal onslaught of coffee, foods and alcohol so spent most of the night being violently sick. He was better in the morning though
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  • Arizmendi bakery

    2018年4月6日, アメリカ ⋅ 🌧 14 °C

    Hugo told us we should start our day here as it has nice food, and is near lake Merrit so we can just start walking after breakfast. We were not disappointed, Seamus chose two cookies, and I chose some kind of yeasty roll with pecans and caramel sauce, it was heavenly.
    Another interesting thing was that this was a workers cooperative; which means that all the workers are equal owners of the company. They all have an equal one vote in deciding all matters, and they share profits equally too.
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  • Dinner with Evi and Hugo

    2018年4月5日, アメリカ ⋅ 🌧 13 °C

    Évi and Hugo took us to a "taphouse" which as far as I understand is a name for a craft beer pub. It had nice beers, and very nice Mexican food too. I had a grilled cactus sandwich and Seamus had potato taquitas. They keep casually mentioning so many cool places to eat and drink, I think we could eat at a new place every night for a year and not get bored...もっと詳しく

  • Pier 39

    2018年4月5日, アメリカ ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C

    A pretty touristic place but worth the visit for the hilarious seal population. Its a contrast between the peaceful female pier where everyone is sleeping and the mostly empty "gladiator ring" where the big boys fight by hilariously flopping at each other until one falls into the bay, usually followed by the other one after knocking himself off balance. We spend probably 45 minutes watching their hilarious antics and then had some local craft beers as any true bay area hipster should (the bar looked like a typical dive bar though and also sold bud light)もっと詳しく

  • San Francisco Chinatown

    2018年4月5日, アメリカ ⋅ ⛅ 15 °C

    The San Francisco Chinatown is definitely bigger that the Japanese one, but it is much much more touristic too. On entering through the dragon's gate, we were greeted mostly with souvenir and "art" shops. The Chinese style buildings did look cool though, especially in the shadows on the financial district's skyscrapers. Also, most of the ads and signs were in Chinese, like big car ad billboards, and posters about the mayor elections. At this point we were starving (we had breakfast at about 7 in the morning with our weird sleep schedule) so we went to a famous "bakery" that actually sells dim sum dumplings. Contrary to my advice Seamus ordered 2 of each dumplings, so we ended up with a solid kilo of food, for 15 dollars. As the place was takeaway, we ate it sitting on a curb. I felt completely full after eating about half of them... Being in a food coma, we walked to a nearby park still in Chinatown. It was a really funny place to sit around, with live Chinese music (especially the singing ones were especially "amazing"), and groups of old Chinese ladies playing cards. Apparently you need to dramatically slap down each card you place too. We also visited the smallest alley in Chinatown - the sign said that the city decided to confine the Chinese population to a certain area, so they had to create these tiny alleys. The funny thing is that to our eyes it was completely wide, in most Spanish or Italian towns cars would have been driving on it with ease. We visited a fortune cookie factory in the same alley, where you can see them folding the cookies in front of you, and also try some of the still warm unfolded cookies. They had some interesting flavoured ones too, i was especially curious about the green tea one, but you could only buy an enormous bag, so we decided against it after all.もっと詳しく

  • Bolinas

    2018年4月4日, アメリカ ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C

    "Bolinas - The town that didn't want company" as said by the New York Times and almost everyone else who knows about this place. Its a weird community that seems like its stuck in the 1970s with grey haired hippy surfers and all round general funny characters including a hobo looking guy with a pet pigeon who traveled on his head! It's really funny seeing houses that start at 1.5 million dollars with rusting 1990s Toyotas sitting outside, either the people want to fit in with the towns image or no one sells their houses here and have owned it since the 70s :D also they have people from the town taking down every sign leading to the place on the main road so not too many people go there

    We got flagged down by a older guy clearing out an art gallery to help him load massive paintings onto the roof of his truck who ended up talking to us for ages about everything - American politics, the Spanish civil war, the azores and that he had lived there since 1973. We walked up and down the main street and past the grand Hotel which is some guys 2 bedroom house which is basically the only place to stay in town and left feeling quite bemused than this weird place exists only 20 miles from San Francisco

    (if you've noticed a change in the writing style, it's because it was written by Seamus after a pint of beer)
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  • Muir Woods National Monument

    2018年4月4日, アメリカ ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C

    So we got to our first redwood park a bit too late (even though we wake up at 6 nowadays, which is a surreal feeling with Seamus, I don't think this has ever happened to him before) because we had to wait for the shops to open at 10. And apparently the parking lots fill up at around 9:30... Fortunately we took a wrong turn, and drove on from the park, and then we pulled over on the side of the road to turn around and figure out what we want to do. And then we realised that there's no "no parking" signs here so we can just leave the car here! A guy was just leaving with his truck and he confirmed that we can park here (we also asked some unrelated traffic questions, as some things are still vague about the traffic system here) so we had free parking a 10 minute hike away instead of having to wait 2 hours for the privilege of paying for it, not bad. We walked the longest available trail of 2 miles around the park, constantly stopping to admire new trees rising to amazing heights. It also smelled amazing, and literally sounded like fake forest noises from a movie. There were nice signs of the side of the road too, for example a photo of the founders of the UN gathering in these exact woods after the death of Roosevelt. Finally we looked around the gift shop, considered buying about 10 different items, and then walked away with a pressed penny instead. It's actually the first time I used one of these, and it actually makes for a cute souvenir for cheap, I might just start collecting these from now on.もっと詳しく

  • American shopping experience

    2018年4月4日, アメリカ ⋅ ☀️ 12 °C

    We had to buy some walking shoes for Seamus and a jacket so we visited and American shopping mall. It really was everything the stereotypes make it to be including cheesy shopping music and every shop assistant trying to he so helpful it started to be creepy :D we also bought a picnic and looked at all the sections you get in American supermarkets - like an entire section devoted only to cookie dough. Also doughnuts were cheaper than potatoes, Bill Bryson was right!もっと詳しく

  • Meeting with cousin Evi

    2018年4月3日, アメリカ ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C

    After visiting the bakery we realised we were completely exhausted so we decided to give up sightseeing for the day. A testament to my tiredness is that we were right next to the piers full off seals, and I just forgot to look at them (even though I love seals and sea lions and otters they are the best). We were next to one of the cute san francisco trams, but the wait for it looked like an hour, so we took a lyft back to our bag hotel instead. The real San Francisco travel experience. Then we walked our bags to the Bart station and took a train to Fruitvale, Oakland where my amazing cousin Evi was waiting to pick us up. We were slightly wondering what Oakland will be like, as it is said to have really dodgy parts, but of course that's not where we ended up living. If anything Oakland feels less dodgy as it's homeless population lives is big centered camps instead of spreading around the whole city. By the way it is definitely not just a suburb of San Francisco, it is a quite large city on its own! And as Hugo kept pointing out, it has a better everything than San Francisco (better craft beer, Mexican food, etc). Oh oh, so Hugo is the husband of my cousin Evi, and he's from Mexico so he definitely knows his Mexican food. I can't wait to try out something approved by him. They live in Oakland with their dog Santo, who they adopted in Cambodia (and they joke that getting the dog into the county was 10 times easier than getting Hugo in :D)もっと詳しく

  • Boudin sourdough bakery

    2018年4月3日, アメリカ ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

    They have been making the same sourdough from the same starter since 1949! Supposedly the san francisco air and water makes for a special breed of bacteria that taste delicious (they do). The way the factory is made, you can see the whole process through glass windows which is really entertaining. There was also a small museum on the history of San Francisco, and their sourdough. Oh also we took a quiz to find out what type of bread we are :Dもっと詳しく