California Vacation

[thumb:1822:l]Over the Thanksgiving break Geeta and I made a trip out to California for a week long vacation. We started our vacation in San Diego, traveled to Los Angeles and finally ended up in Pleasanton. On our arrival in San Diego, shortly after lunch the weather was perfect. Cloudless blue sky, bright sun light, 70°F. We picked up the rental and began to soak in the wonderful atmosphere.

[thumb:1833:r] We were starving from out 7+ hour flight from Boston, so decided to find the nearest Italian joint to quench our insatiable appetite. In our wanderings, we came across Buca Di Beppo. There was something very familiar about this place and I figured it out once we entered the restaurant. This was the same place I had visited while on a business trip in Pittsburgh, PA.

[thumb:1838:l]After a quick lunch we headed out to find our lodging for our stay in San Diego. We then immediately returned to the sea side to enjoy more of the scenery. We hung around until sunset and then headed off to Old Towne San Diego to check out some Mexican restaurants that were promised to be there. Old Towne, from my understanding, is the original San Diego town which now has expanded to be much larger.

[thumb:1848:r]Old Towne is consistent of about 3 parallel streets and a dozen blocks of quaint little shops and the finest Mexican restaurants this side of US-Mexican border. We strolled the streets, both to build up an appetite after a late lunch and to figure out which of the 20 odd restaurants we’d eat at that evening. We finally walked by a restaurant that had two ladies making tortillas by hand amongst the patrons and we knew we’d found our place for the night.

[thumb:1852:l]The following day we spent the first few hours, until noon, at the San Diego Zoo. Reputed to be one of the largest zoos in North America, we spent about 4 hours walking through it all. I’ve always liked Zoos. The added bonus of being able to see a Panda bear, having never seen one in person, was the icing on this delicious cake.

[thumb:1965:r]We hung out that night in Balboa Park, a quaint little park with some very high class restaurants. We waited till the sun had fallen before returning to the hotel to sleep. Having spent the day walking around in the sun we were pretty tired to do much of anything else than fall asleep.

[thumb:1976:l]The following day we were off to Los Angles and in particular Rodeo Dr. The amounts of expensive stores and cars on these streets makes me cringe. We saw lots of people shopping some very high end places like Emporio Armani, Gucci, Versace, DKNY, Prada and let me tell you, they weren’t window shopping either!

[thumb:1986:r]We continued the day with a trip down to Hollywood Blvd to check out Grauman’s Chinese Theater and the footprints made famous in the show “I Love Lucy”. The transition from Rodeo Drive and it’s sheer opulence to Hollywood Blvd’s right down crummy-ness is quite amazing to witness. Reminds me of my visit to D.C., but that’s for another time.

[thumb:2020:l]Our stay in Los Angeles was short and thankfully so. The traffic in this major metropolis is quite overwhelming. I think we spent more time sitting in traffic than actually visiting places. We were glad to be on our way Northward towards San Fransisco. Our next stop brought us to San Luis Obispo about half way between Los Angeles and San Fransisco.

[thumb:2039:r]Our final destination was San Fransisco and we reached there just before Thanksgiving. We saw the Golden Gate Bridge, did the 17-mile drive down in Monterey and drove down the famous Lombard St in San Fransisco.

All in all, our California vacation was awesome, we got to hit some of the major spots in the major cities. I would definitely like to go back there, but spend more time in one place as opposed to trying to trek across a vast state in one week.

San Diego was by far the best place to visit for it’s mellow feeling. Los Angeles is just too crowded, noisy and not fun. San Fran is very hip, but not as cool as San Diego.

Enjoy the pictures…

Cheers

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