Remember that trip I was thinking of taking down to Berkeley? Well, it happened!

Got a flight down after work in the middle of the week (Wednesday) on Southwest, with a direct flight into Oakland (much nicer than those flights into Oakland via SFO & DEN...). I was late heading to the airport, and then the Max broke down en route, so I was worried about missing the flight and got chastised by the security checkpoint people for being in such a hurry (I mandate this was merely because of the contrast of my efficiency with the sloth immediately preceding me...). But I made it with plenty of time to spare. And the flight was only a quarter or third full, so I ended up with no one next to me (nice change of pace from most flights where I seem to be singled out by "larger" individuals as a good seatmate...).

Anyway, landed a bit early and promptly found out Emil (the friend I was going down to visit & stay with) had only just left. And then he got lost because of GPS issues. So, I ended up hanging around curbside for an hour. There's not much to see at an airport at night. Eventually we met up & headed back to Berkeley. Only to end up on Treasure Island. Oops...silly GPS units...but I did get a good view of San Francisco at night, which was cool (sorry; no pics, we were in the car and couldn't really stop to get out the cameras).

The next day was spent walking around the Berkeley campus. I liked how it was hilly and had vegetation. Purdue just seems kind of...flat...in comparison. I think Purdue had better architecture though, and more modern facilities. So maybe all that construction that my tuition paid for was worth it after all...

: Tree on campus (near the Life Science's building)

: Soda Hall, UC Berkeley campus

The next day was supposed to be tourist day in San Francisco. Which started off really well; we got to San Francisco without getting lost again (hehe...). But the weather didn’t really cooperate & it rained. A lot. We still walked around Fisherman's Wharf, which was pretty deserted. On the bright side, parking was really easy! So after grabbing lunch & getting wet, we got back into the car to see the other attraction at the top of my list: the Golden Gate Bridge :

: Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco

By the time we got to the view point though, the weather had turned a bit worse. Winds came in and the rain started coming down harder. After grabbing a photo or two, I got the brilliant idea of heading over to the visitor center (50 feet away). Those 50 feet resulted in my rain jacket getting soaked through. The 50 feet back to the car meant that we were both totally soaked. At which point it seemed like a good idea to conclude the site seeing for the day and just head back. For dinner, I met up with a friend from high school (John) that works in the Valley. Which was a lot of fun (even if I don't feel like I helped the conversation much...:( ... meh).

The last full day there consisted of a lot of driving. Headed over to South San Francisco to see where my parent's are going to be living now & hit up a couple of Filipino Bake Shops to get goodies for my coworkers. Got to see the big "South San Francisco" sign, stopped at Red Ribbon & Goldilocks, and then headed out to the coast at Pacifica. Drove down route 1 to Half Moon Bay...the coast there is beautiful!

: Montara Beach (?)

On the way back we swung through Mountain View, Santa Clara, and San Jose. Honestly, that was probably the part of the trip I liked the least. Too many strip malls, suburbs, cars, & people. Which to be honest is kind of what I was expecting from California... Seeing all the tech companies there was sort of interesting, but didn't outweigh the dislike of the environment. On the plus side, I did find out that Skype video conferencing actually works really well over my WWAN connection from AT&T (you still need to come out & see it in person though, Matt!).

So, California...liked San Francisco, liked Berkeley, liked the coast, but didn't really like Silicon Valley all that much (nor the East Bay Area much either...). I'll have to go back sometime & hope for better weather so I can actually do the touristy stuff. Maybe in April...got some time off there...might drive down this time though...

(full picture album)

Now playing: In-Flight Safety – The Coast is Clear – 07 Fear