In San Jose for the night

[fenchurch]

Yesterday was spent driving to Salinas where we stayed the night, before heading to the Monterey Bay Aquarium today... rackham has wanted to go there since "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" came out (or possibly before, but that movie *really* made him want to see it). It was quite impressive, although I couldn't help comparing it to the Melbourne Aquarium (they're actually quite different and each have things that blow the other away). The Kelp Tank, in particular, was absolutely incredible... but a good portion of the aquarium was geared pretty specifically toward children. Not a bad thing, but not as interesting to adults.

We walked around Cannery Row for a bit and ended up getting sucked into the Ghirardelli Shop there.. where I totally blew my diet out of the water with something called a Midnight Reverie Sundae (Ghirardelli chocolate ice cream layered with dark chocolate sauce and topped with whipped cream, dark chocolate chips and a square of Midnight Reverie chocolate (86% dark chocolate)). It was so good... but I don't think I'm going to want chocolate again for awhile. Apparently, it actually is possible to overdose on chocolate!

Afterward we drove up to San Jose, by way of Gilmore. What a surprise to find out that the tales are true: the town of Gilmore smells VERY strongly of garlic. We just missed the Garlic Festival by a few days (it was last weekend), but the scent permeates everything there. We got into San Jose early enough that we decided to catch a movie... so I *finally* got to see "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" (and now I can start reading through the backlog of peoples' comments on it), but I think I'll save my comments on it for another post, in case anyone is still trying to stay unspoiled.

We got back to the hotel around 9:30 and realized we still hadn't had dinner... the nearby choices weren't terribly promising (since neither of us are fond of Denny's), but just a few blocks away we found a nice-looking Phở place that was still open. Excellent food! And the owners were really nice people -- we didn't notice the handwritten "Cash Only" sign until we went up to pay and we were a bit short on the cash front (by about $2), so Rackham used the ATM they had in the lobby, all while the owner was telling us we could just pay part tonight and drop the rest off later. We chatted with her for a bit and found out that she used to live in Beaverton, OR when she first came to the US, but she thought it was too cold there and headed south (the very thing I like about the Northwest :-). Anyway, if you're ever in San Jose, I can highly recommend the food and service at Phở Bang.

Tomorrow we're heading over to the Winchester House, which is something I've always wanted to see... and then we're planning on taking I-80 back to Sacramento (so we can go through the tunnel) and eventually on up to Red Bluff for the night.

Comments

[fenchurche.livejournal.com]

The one thing it really has going for it are those gigantic tanks... which were pretty darned impressive. But the smaller exhibits were just that... small. The otter tanks were pretty cool... as were the otters (and harbor seals) we could see out in the ocean from the balcony of the Aquarium.