FILOLI - a day trip

After living in the bay area for ten years, we found a place this week that we have driven past over the years, but never checked out.

Somehow we did not even register the sign on Highway 280 that says "FILOLI - next exit. National Historic Landmark Site".

Thanks to Anu.P and K. we knew about the existance of this wonderful place called FILOLI.

It is a mansion named for FIght LOve LIve. You can read more at their website.

We had a blast. It was a really hot day, but some of the gardens in the place were extremely cool and refreshing. We also went on a self tour of the mansion. Wow!! It was just amazing. The whole family had a blast. The added bonus was that we were joined by the cousins and a host of friends!

The best part was that daddy got to dance with his daughters in a beautiful ballroom and there was a lady playing wonderful waltzes on a piano in the corner.

Here is the trip in pictures.

The Landmark marker!

Posing with the kids and the MIL at the garden entrance...


Have no idea what this flower was, but it was inviting the camera. Missed my Tamron for a few seconds there!


The wonderful Allium. We have this in our house as well. The ones in our front yard never got to this size!


A wall of flowers!


A beautiful shot of San with the kids in front of the garden!


Jr. in front of the pool and clock tower.


This was a beautiful arrangement at the end of the rose garden


The rose garden. Really well maintained. Jr. though had a big issue with the "buggies" aka bees and wasps!


Another fantastic garden with tall well pruned hedges. When you have 654 Acres of land at your disposal, you can have many such gardens each visually more enchanting than the previous one!


The rose garden


A sample of the roses (there are lots of rose portraits, liked this one the best)


Note the dark pink looking plant on the right of this photo...


It is full of a rose looking miniature!


One of the coolest places at FILOLI outside the gardens


One of the majestic rooms at the Estate mansion! Gives you some idea of what half a million dollars can get you in the mid 1800's!


The ladies of the estate used to have tea ceremonies where they would gather and discuss the matters of the day. So says the informational video! When you put two Madrasi granny's in the same location a 150 years later, they still have a discussion alright, tea or otherwise! The two grannies were busy discussing anything under the sun (or shade) while the younger generation was busy running after the youngest generation!


One of the murals on the walls of the ballroom. Apparently made in the artists studio in New York. How they got it to this place in the mid 1800's is beyond me! Ship? Road? Did they break it in sections?


Finally a picture of daddy with the little one. A little blurry but you can still make out the happiness in the little one's face when she is dancing. She has this divine smile!


It was a memorable trip. If you happen to live in the bay area or you are visiting in spring or early summer, this is guranteed to be a good day of fun!

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Beach heaven!

As most of you must know by now, Daddy's favorite spots are beaches. There is something to be said about the sand, the water, the waves, the vast expanse of sky, the people, the sundal(substitute with cheese sandwich, soda, home made mullu murukku or what have you) and the experience is usually a great one!

Last week a friend told us that he took his kids to this beach in San Mateo with the backwater or creek and the kids had lots of fun! We had been to this place once before, five years ago to show MIL california beaches on her first visit to the US of A. Unfortunately we did it in January when it was really cold and there was no one at the beach.

This time, different story. We went there(San Gregorio State Beach) and the cousin family joined us within an hour after we settled down. It was a lot of fun. The San Gregorio Creek joins the sea after making a couple of bends. The water is only a few inches deep and the flow is minimal. The water in the estuary is also warmer than the sea water.

The San Gregorio beach is right at the intersection of route 84 and route 1. I always take 84 to hit route 1 instead of the 92 because it is less windy and more scenic and today for the first time we stopped at Alice's restaurant (a very popular place with a lot of history) and had coffee, ice cream and snacks. It was wonderful!

Once the little one got in the water, there was no stopping her!

The original plan was to go to the Santa Cruz boardwalk and that said, we were definitely not packed for a beach trip. We winged it anyways, thanks to a few towels and the Sun shining brightly on us.

Our fun filled afternoon came to an abrupt end when the Beach Patrol came and asked us to leave. A helicopter was to land on the beach to do an emergency medical transport.

So we rushed out of the beach. All said and done, a day well spent!

On a side note, Wishing all of you a wonderful "Tamizh New year" (yep, starts tomorrow!).

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Christmas Party for Children

After the "Santa" interest was piqued at the Disney parade, the little one has been waiting for an "up close and personal" with Mr. Claus the last few weeks.

That picture is from the Disney Thanksgiving day parade.

Today, her wish came true, thanks to a Christmas party organized by IBM for the employees Children.. They did a fantastic job, staring with the photo with Santa, followed by Caricatures, face painting, balloons for kids, decorate a cookie and what not, all in the IBM Cafeteria!

Spent a few hours there and the kids had sooo much fun!

Here are the pictures..

This is a picture of a picture. Also, this is a cropped version without the older women..

The Caricature dude (Big Al) was amazing.. the kids posed for him really well.

Overall, a fun filled day!

ps. they called it the "Childrens Christmas party" and I thought it should be called Chistmas party for Children.. Hence the title change and repost..

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Video Blogs made easy

Now that Blogger has introduced the instant video uploader (like the photo uploader), I am giving it a shot now.. I will fail in my duty as a technologist if I do not attempt to use cool stuff that gets unleashed on drooling engineers. So here goes..

Hope this works. By the way, after my wife sees this video, this feature might become moot for this blog! My first video blog in pre Youtube days took 3 hours to make and upload. With Youtube, it was 5-10 minutes.

Now it is 2 mins!!

Tell me if you like this..

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Oakland zoo - Photos

Promised myself an upload of the last few photos before writing about other sentimental stuff (yes, I foresee some sentimental mush in this site in the near future!).

Here are the last few photos of last weekends trip!

The zoo has as many unique plants as animals and birds!

This is just your common berry ...

Now for some photos of the cuties to round up the post. I am yet to perfect the sports mode with this camera. Have to practice taking pictures of the moving kids..

It is almost next weekend again!!

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