We are back from our work/vacation in the great state of California. I had been to California for work before, but didn’t really get out much. This time I brought Tamara who is the super planner of good times. I had booked my flight through my company’s travel agent so we flew separately. Tamara was on the same flight down as the x-fighters, who had a show the day before in Calgary.
http://www.redbullxfighters.com/
She met a nice lady on her flight from Calgary to San Francisco who offered Tamara a ride to the hotel, which was very nice. The hotel was OK and had a nice pool. The training I had was excellent. It was really cool driving around Silicon Valley and seeing all the big name companies. I was training on a product by a company called EMC. They are the biggest IT Company you have never heard of. All the products they sell are backend infrastructure related. The office I was in was right beside Yahoo’s head office. The cafeteria was probably one of the best I’ve ever seen, with great food.
Tamara spent her days shopping and at the spa. She took the bus down to Santa Cruz one day and I drove out and met her after class. Nice little community on the ocean, with a cool amusement park on the boardwalk. This was the same amusement park were the 80’s classic “The Lost Boys” was filmed. Pretty cool and creepy. We walked around then found this little restaurant on the pier and had dinner. You could feel the building sway as we sat there eating, with a great view all around us.
Some things I discovered in California that I love.
Jamba Juice
In and Out Burger
On the last day in San Jose we went to the Winchester Mystery house. See entry below from Wikipedia.
The Winchester Mystery House is a well-known California mansion that was under construction continuously for 38 years, and is reported to be haunted. It once was the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, but is now a tourist attraction. Under Winchester’s day-to-day guidance, its “from-the-ground-up” construction proceeded around-the-clock, without interruption, from 1884 until her death on September 5, 1922, at which time work immediately ceased.[2] The cost for such constant building has been estimated at about US $5.5 million[3] (if paid in 1922, this would be equivalent to almost $70 million in 2008 dollars).[4]
The mansion is renowned for its size and utter lack of any master building plan. According to popular belief, Winchester thought the house was haunted by the ghosts of individuals killed by Winchester rifles, and that only continuous construction would appease them. It is located at 525 South Winchester Blvd. in San Jose, California.
After the tour of the house we drove to San Francisco for the weekend. We stayed at the Sheraton on fisherman’s Warf. Friday night was our first creepy stop in San Francisco at a bar called the DNA lounge. They had a burlesque show called “Zombie Beach Party”. It was pretty fun. There was a loose story line around some bikers and Nazi’s invading the beach and turning the girls into Zombies, who then promptly began to remove their clothes. The next day we made our final creepy stop of the vacation to Alcatraz Island. We took the audio tour and hear some cool stories about escape attempts, murders and some of the more famous inmates.
Later I finally went for my run to and across the Golden Gate Bridge. Stunning. That night we had the best meal of the trip at a great seafood restaurant on the pier.
So it was a whirlwind week of fun. I took some days of this week to recover. Truly the creepiest vacation ever.
