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    Pier 39

    5 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ☁️ 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)Meer informatie

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    Dinner with Evi and Hugo

    5 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ 🌧 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...Meer informatie

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    Arizmendi bakery

    6 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ 🌧 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.    Meer informatie

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    Rain rain rain, beer beer beer

    6 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ 🌧 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    Meer informatie

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    Oh we just walk the dog here usually

    7 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ⛅ 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.Meer informatie

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    Berkeley uni campus

    7 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ⛅ 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...    Meer informatie

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    Voting in the Hungarian elections

    7 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ⛅ 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.Meer informatie

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    Googleplex

    7 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ⛅ 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.Meer informatie

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    Jamaican jerk chicken

    7 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ⛅ 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)Meer informatie

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    Breakfast at a Mexican supermarket

    8 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ☀️ 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.Meer informatie

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    Jelly belly factory

    8 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C

    I have no idea how I found out about this, but they give free tours in the original Jelly belly factory, and it was on the way up to Napa, so we decided to visit. It was unfortunately a Sunday, so nothing was actually running down in the factory,but it was still cool to see. They had big glass windows all around the factory and a walkway high up so we could see everything. While on tour everyone had to wear dorky hats. We learned about some of the funny/ridiculous flavours they invented, and also about how Ronald Reagan apparently really liked jelly bellies, and he had a dedicated container in his office. Oh, also that jelly belly art apparently is a thing. At the end of the tour they even gave us a free bag of jelly beans!Meer informatie

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    Napa valley wine tasting

    8 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    I booked an airbnb in Napa a few days ago just because I saw a really cheap one for the area. Afterwards reading up about it and talking with Evi and Hugo, we realised we probably would have been better off going to the neighbouring Sonoma region. Napa is the super famous, fancy and expensive wine region, while right next to it Sonoma has similar wines, but a more laid back atmosphere and about half the price (even one of the sommeliers in Napa itself tod us to go there instead) . But anyway the airbnb was booked, so it had to be Napa after all. We considered renting bikes, but Seamus wouldn't have wanted to drink that much even then (still trying to get his stomach to be normal again) so he just drove us around and I did most of the drinking. We chose an amazing time to visit, as 2 days after the torrential rain, the whole place was ridiculously green. Like greener than Scotland green. There were also all kinds of wild flowers growing here and there. So basically Napa valley is a 30 mile long valley, about 5 miles wide at its widest. The sorrounding hills are all covered in forests, and the valley itself is covered with grape plantations. There's 400-600 little vineyards all around, and all of them offer tastings. Unfortunately while about 10 years ago these used to be free, now they al charge a fee, which at "cheap" places start at 20 dollars from having a small tasting of 4 wines, but easily start from 40-50 at others. We still drove in to multiple wineries (even though we only consumed wine at 2 of them) as all of them have beautiful setup so it was always nice to stop and look around. In the middle of green wine fields, all the houses are beautiful (in a variety of styles, from super modern ones, to cute wood houses, to tuscan villas) they all have big terraces to hang out, try wines or have picnics. We did a tasting flight (that's what they call them apparently) at Black Stallion vineyard, where the sommelier's grandparents were Hungarian, so we bonded over his wish of visiting Hungary and his love of bikaver. Our favourite place was Honig vineyard, I could spend days sitting in their garden. The girls serving us were super friendly and we talked with them for a long time. One of the girls got married in Scotland, on the island of his "husband's clan" ! Here we managed to buy a half bottle of wine instead of the tasting, which was actually better value. They kept bringing out thoughtful stuff, like a cute book on the dogs of the area's vineyards, or just to check on us and chat. Even if the wine was expensive, the experience was definitely worth it for the day!Meer informatie

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    Going out in Napa town

    8 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ 🌙 14 °C

    Our airbnb was in the suburb of Napa, about 2 miles from the town center. We decided to ignore our host's advice about taking an uber (thinking that she's just being American about it and thinks walking is unthinkable). In the end it took us about 40-50 minutes to get to the centre, as the town was really not designed to walk, so we had some quite difficult times trying to go around motorways (and not walking on them like Google suggested). Apart from the motorway problems it was a nice walk in typical American suburbia, which was interesting to see (once). In town we first had some frozen yogurt (trying out basically all of the possible flavours before buying some, basically doubling our consumption). Then we went to a bbq and wine bar, so finally Seamus could consume his own glass of wine. We didn't plan on eating anything originally, but everything smelled so amazingly smoky, that in the e d we ordered a smoked beef brisket sandwich and shared it, it was really delicious, and basically a perfect amount for the two of us.Meer informatie

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    Pancakes and bacon

    9 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ☀️ 13 °C

    Today we drove down from napa to monterey, stopping in the morning for a typical American breakfast at IHOP. Bacon eggs and a stack of pancakes with whipped butter, just the thing to put us back to sleep before the drive down to monterey.Meer informatie

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    The garlic capital of the world

    9 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C

    We also stopped off in gilroy by Seamus request (his grandma has a cup from the 1992 gilroy garlic festival!) this town specialises in garlic and they sold everything you can possibly put garlic in including the world's longest string of garlic. We were hoping to buy a mug of our own but unfortunately we could not find any.Meer informatie

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    Monterey aquarium

    9 april 2018, North Pacific Ocean ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C

    After the garlic madness we headed down to monterrey where they have one of the biggest and coolest aquariums in America. I am in love with otters, so that was my biggest wish to see, but probably the coolest things to see were the enormous aquariums multiple meters high. There was one of the life of the harbours, one on life in the kelp forest, and one on the deep sea (probably the coolest). It was amazing to see huge swarms of sardines swimming around like they had one communal mind, and also the beautiful but disturbing jelly fish, which I managed to drag Seamus into (to the room to see them, not into the jellyfish themselves) . There were also some tiny and harmless jellyfish, that had colorful led displays moving on their bodies, they were unbelievable.
    But the sea otters were cute to see as well, they were swimming around playing with each other and the water and even with toys, they had tons of balls hanging around, that they would pick up and balance between their hands. They are quite good with their hands and they use them to open up shells of sea creatures (they scratched up the display window super bad until the aquarium learned they should not get shelled food in there). I also learned that they don't have oil on their fur, they only pat themselves to fluff up their fur to have as much air as possible for insulation.    Meer informatie

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    Another day another beach

    9 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    After the aquarium we still had about 2 hours of sunshine left, so first we stopped off at a beach which I saw from the car earlier. It caught my eye, as the sand dunes next to it seemed to be covered in something red, which turned out to be succulents affected by some late spring cold, that have turned all kinds of red. Before going to the beach we stopped to get some takeout for dinner, trying a new fast food place, Carl's junior (it was OK) the beach turned out be be quite beautiful even without the red succulents. There were incredibly big and loud waves, with some sea birds sitting on the water who were always ducking at the last minute like little surfers. Also the top of the hill overlooking the beach had quite a big squirrel population, we kept spotting the little dudes running across the trail, or hanging out at the edge of the cliff munching of flower petals.Meer informatie

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    Sea otters in the wild

    9 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ 🌙 18 °C

    I found something one the internet about a month ago, that some nearby harbour has sea otters living around in it, that you can see, and we had just enough time to try and find them before the sun went down. I didn't have very high hopes - I thought at the very best we would see something so perhaps far away, but in the end we were really lucky. There was a huge group of otters lounging about in the sea that we could clearly see play and float around, and there were two of them sleeping on the beach only a few metres away from us. We stayed to watch them until the sun went down.Meer informatie

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    Carmel by the sea

    10 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

    Our first stop today we what we didn't have time for yesterday - Carmel by the sea, which is a town with an long and beautiful beach and with big and beautiful and expensive houses. Oh and frolicking dogs on its beach, according to its own description (there were quite a lot to be fair). We had a nice walk along the beach, but up on a path not in the sand - I spared Seamus from walking in the sand this time.Meer informatie

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    Route 101

    10 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C

    Our main program for today was to drive down route 101 past Big Sur State park, and stopping whenever we find it scenic enough (basically at all times) unfortunately we couldn't drive down the coats all the way to Los Angeles as the road was closed off for our direction after Gorda. So instead we were forced to drive through the mountains on small twisty roads for an hour and a half to drive back to the main road. It was still a nice drive, so I wouldn't complain too much. We had a small scary moment when our car started making horrifying noises in the middle of nowhere, but it turned out to be just the engine cover scraping on the ground, and we managed to push it back up again.
    Other from that we had amazing weather the whole day, it was warm but not too warm for jeans. There was also not a crowd anywhere so it was nice to drive and we could stop and have a parking place wherever we wanted to.    Meer informatie

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    Pfeiffer beach

    10 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

    This beaches was a tiny bit off the main 101 road, and we did have to pay 10 dollars for parking, but it was worth it for me as it was really beautiful. I wanted to go to this beach because I read that it had purple sand, which did prove to be true - although it is not bright purple of course, but a light coating of purple sand on top of the normal one. We took some time to explore the rocks, me barefoot, Seamus in his new super grippy boating sneakers. There were lot of animals around and pretty views of course. Both on the way in an out we had to drive through a smallish river, and we chose to do it in the fastest possible speed (we did rent an suv after all) which covered all the front of the windows completely in water and was great fun. We drove back to do it an extra time before leaving.Meer informatie

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    Stopping for coffee with a surprise

    10 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C

    After a picnic lunch, I became super sleepy and was dosing off all the time, missing the beautiful views. So after we tried having a short nap that didn't really help we mage the sensible decision and stopped for coffee. It made us grateful that we brought a picnic - this place had small pastries for 9-10 dollars each, we didn't even dare to look at other food prices... On the way back to the car, I want up to a tree to look at its unusual flowers and then to my amazement a hummingbird flew up to it. In my excitement all I could do was keep shouting, "look Seamus, a kolibri" to which he kept asking what a kolibri was, and I just kept saying, a kolibri, a kolibri! Finally he spotted the bird too, so he informed me it's name was a hummingbird. It was really incredible to me to see one just hanging out in front of a bar. In general there seems to be much more wildlife about, and lots of them are pretty and exciting and new for us. Almost every minute you can spot a hawk circling around the sky as well, they are also beautiful.Meer informatie

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    Our first night at an inn

    10 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C

    We found an actual Inn on airbnb for quite a good price, and it was just far enough to get there after dark, but still have dinner. It was actually quite nice inside, the room was really enormous, and there was an ice machine a few meters outside out door (I've no idea what Americans actually do with ice at a motel, but it seems to be a thing they have at every place). We wanted to try chowder while we were still at the seaside, so that's what we both ordered. It was nice, but not amazing (spoiler for the future, as I am writing this a bit late: the next day we went to a place that is famous for its chowder, and it tasted much much better). We forgot to acquire cake for me, but we had a big portion of warm brownie topped with vanilla ice cream.Meer informatie

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    Morning walk in Morro Bay

    11 april 2018, Verenigde Staten ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C

    We woke up to a slightly cloudy day, but went to look around the town we stayed at for a short while. We had some sweet apple pastry for breakfast, and I got a small coffee with it: which was easily 3 dl big, and I could have had free refills on it if it wasn't enough... Unfortunately the town's only famous sight, the skateboard museum was closed, so we could only look at it from the outside. In the harbour I found a guy washing out some containers, and two big seals circling around under him, shouting in their weird load voices. I think we heard the same seal from our bedroom in the morning too.Meer informatie

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