A weekend getaway with friends to Bodega Bay

For over 20 years we have wanted to visit Bodega bay. An old friend and colleague Kevin kept raving about this place after spending a weekend there with his wife. The opportunity never came. In early April, our friends called us to join them for a weekend at Windor (same area). They had access to a timeshare. We drove the two plus hours on a rainy Friday evening to Windsor. It was a cute apartment. Even if we did not go anywhere outside and were just chatting it would have still been a great weekend.

The trips to Bodega bay, the local estuary walk, telling them about the bench photo tradition, lunch at a Nepalese place in Sebastapol, visiting Healdsburg, spending time at a bookstore there followed by some delicious ice cream, walking in the rain and drizzle through the streets and art galleries there… all of that was just extra. Every family has a crazy person and a sane person.. you would have come to that conclusion if all our conversations were overheard.

We had fun!

More pics.. The late lunch at Namaste Kitchen was delicious! The ice cream and hot cocoa on a rainy afternoon at Noble folks in Healdsburg was out of the world!

Walking in Sebastopol on Florence avenue to admire the junk art was a great exprience. We met Patrick Amiot and thanked him for his creations!

while walking around the place we saw a very real reminder of current events.

A video highlights reel..

We are all getting to a different phase of our lives with the kids becoming young adults. It is great to feel young again.. only friends can do that with effortless ease!

Here is to many more getaways! The kids are probably rolling their eyes as they read this.. but will take that!

Banff- return with a few interesting stops

The previous post on this series is here..

We had started Friday afternoon to go from SFO to Calgary. We were coming back Monday afternoon. That meant we had half a day to spend on the return.

Given we were used to waking up early the last two days, we did the same on Monday, checked out and started driving towards Calgary from Banff.

First stop was Lake Minnewanka. We were pretty much the only folks there. We did a short hike around the lake and realized it was getting pretty hot and we were hungry.

There is a steam boat ride on this lake which is a family owned business (or so it appeared). When the family showed up, we started out of the park!

Our plan was to go to a place called Cochrane on the way to get ice cream at McKays. Every person we knew from this area had told us "do not miss this ice cream!"

Thing was that this shop opened at 10AM. We would be at least an hour early after we drove from Banff to Cochrane. We walked around the closed shops on what was the main storefront in this cute town and decided to have breakfast at a place called Sunny side up. The service was fast and the food and hot cocoa were excellent. We had managed to kill an hour. 

Then it was ice cream time! The folks were right. This ice cream was delicious. It was finished in record time.

We were still too early for our flight. The new friends we made at ink pots, had suggested that we check out downtown Calgary on the way back if we had time. They had mentioned something about a Rodeo and Cowboy festival called Stampede that we might see. 

We spent a good 15 minutes trying to find a parking spot. The whole place was festive! There were cowboy hat stores on the streets, everyone dressed up for the event, square dancing lessons on the street, etc.  

 

We spent a good hour walking around downtown, checking out what I thought was Canadian crows (turns out they were part of the crow family), enjoying the skycrapers.. and we said a quick goodbye and went to the airport!

A video of the morning..

This was a good vacation. I was hesitant to go on such a hectic trip, but San convinced me to go! Good thing I listened.  

We did get COVID the day after we landed and the next 10 days was a blank! Chances are we got it in SFO as masks were mandatory in Canada and optional in the US! 

I for one am glad that these posts are delayed. COVID put a negative touch to the whole trip, but looking back, the trip in itself was amazing and we had a great time! 

We will definitely visit Alberta again in a few years, just to go to Jasper National park and also spend a few more days instead of doing a "sampler weekend trip".

Now the blog has to catch up on a few more hikes we did locally! 

A day in San Francisco...

We spent a day in San Francisco by Pier 39 to take the kids to some place local and have some fun..

Turned out to be a great idea. So far our SFO trips have covered the usual Golden Gate bridge, Crooked street and end with Ice cream at Ghirardelli's..

There have been some deviations in the past to the tour guide routine but for once we decided to explore things we have walked or driven past. In other words get to smell the roses a bit, which was kind of a theme in the family over the last few days.

So off we went to visit the COIT tower..

The base of the tower has some amazing murals. Not posting the pictures of the murals here because they make some money selling prints. Guess that is why they have a sign that says "no flash or tripods"..

We had a nice home cooked packed lunch in our Van and went on towards Ghiardelli's, except this time we parked and went to the Maritime museum lobby and walked along the beach to see the different vessels docked at Hyde Street Pier.

The kids had fun getting on the various vessels. It was a world they had never been exposed to. It was so much fun watching their eyes widen as they read the displays and watched informational videos two levels below the deck of a cargo vessel..

There were great views of Alcatraz and Embarcadero from the ships.

The masts were majestic and we were simply awe struck by the fact that these ships with triple masts have survived the test of time and have been preserved for such a long time.

It was also fun watching the little one trying to steer the ship one handle at a time. The ship was just swaying a few feet and she wanted to control it!

It was also interesting to see how prices have changed over time!

Then we went on our walk to enjoy those things on the sidewalk and displays we usually rush past because we are on a deadline to head back to San Jose..

First we stopped at a window where a couple of bakers were doing a display..

What a display ! Truly magnificent piece of bread! They also had starfish, turtles and crab shaped bread pieces which were very impressive.

The little one had fun interacting with the guys painted in silver and dressed as robots.

We walked by the Hard Rock Cafe and past the Christmas tree at the end of the pier and went to see the Aquarium. The entry tickets were a bit steep but thanks to a AAA discount we decided to go for it. After all it was our "smell the roses" day!

The aquarium was actually worth it. Three levels of well maintained displays with more than 20,000 fishes and marine animals. It was like a compact version of the Monterey bay aquarium which also had two glass tunnels, one for shallow water fish and one for fish at deeper waters in the bay.

The last room was kind of weird. It wasn't exactly related to fishes but was about conservation and sponsored by Pacific Gas and Electric.

They had hedgehogs and

turtles and

Chinchillas which apparently poop 200 times a day. They don't look much but their display cage had more poop than food which amused the kids..

Then it was time to return to Ghirardelli's to have some ice cream and hot chocolate before returning to San Jose...

We started and ended the routine the same way but the detour was wonderful.

Next time we go there are a whole bunch of Art galleries, a Wax museum, a Ripley's Believe it or Not show , etc. etc. and we might just do another one of these wander around trips about a place that we have grown to love over the years!

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