Friday, June 15, 2007

Do You Want To Ride In My Mercedes, Boy?

(Sorry for the delay, but these are the highlights since the last entry, Day 2/Thursday from our trip. We didn't get to CC in time to post Thursday night... so we are basically posting a day behind)



After blogging last night at Citizen Cupcake (herein after referred to as CC) we went to grab dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. By this point we were WAY tired, and the meal was pretty much lost on us. Finally back to the room by 9:30 p.m. and we crashed big time. We were going on about 2 hours sleep over the past 40 hours, and we were both getting a little crabby.
After a fabulous nights rest, we were ready for Day 2. We grabbled a quick breakfast at our hotel and headed a few blocks down the street to Hertz to rent a car to go to San Jose to the Winchester Mystery House. We were supposed to get a Ford Focus (or equivalent), but they were busy, the cheap crappy cars were all buried in the back of the queue and since we were bringing it back tonight we totally scored and they gave us a sweet little Mercedes C230, in a bright candy apple red. Ladies and gentlemen, it is a sweet ride. It took us about half the trip to San Jose to figure out how to work the darn thing, but we are really getting used to it now. On our way out of town I was poking along because we weren’t certain of our directions, and we experienced some road rage from a fellow driver… probably never would have happened if we were in the Ford Focus… don’t judge people, don’t judge.

We toured the Winchester Mystery House today, and it was a great time. It was the home of Sarah Winchester, of the Winchester rifle fortune, and well lets just say Miss Sarah was freakin’ crazy. She moved to San Jose from the east coast after her husband and infant daughter died, and a psychic told her to build a house and never finish… boy did she ever. She thought continually building the house would appease the spirits of the many people killed by Winchester rifles. The mansion tour took over an hour, and we walked over a mile, if you can believe it, and we saw 110 of the 165 rooms in the home. Sarah was wack, there are stairs to nowhere, useless windows everywhere including one in the floor, it was crazy. The tour was very interesting, but one lady in our group was just a little too much. She was just a little too into it, and well she was pretty much annoying us all afternoon…damn tourists! Another mystery from the mystery house was a woman on the tour with a young man about 25, and an older man about 65-70, at first I thought she was married to the old guy, then I thought she was “with” the young guy, and we still don’t have it completely figured out yet. The latest version is that the young guy is her stepson, and the old guy her father-in-law but it really is a mystery. We knew SF/Cali would be expensive, but oh my they take that to heart at the Winchester House snack bar… it made ballpark food look like a bargain.



After hanging with ghosts at the Winchester’s we headed over to the coast for a scenic drive and some lunch/dinner. We stopped in Half Moon Bay for a great meal at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company, and ate near the water. Nikki was carded, so our Cameraon Diaz look-a-like waitress needless to say received a very generous tip. I tried the seasonal brew, Cherry Bomb Brown Ale, and it was thumbs up. Nik tried it too, and didn’t even maker her “beer face”, so it must have been really good.

We then drove down the coast a bit, and are currently sitting on the beach just chillin’. Typically we type the blog in a word file, and cut and paste at CC, so I am really BEACH BLOGGGING, it rocks (Nathan, it is even better than Sofa Surfing… you must do this in Australia). By the way, Illinois really need to get an ocean. Not that I am a swimmer or a surfer but is just delightful.
All for now. Going to actually enjoy the beach for a bit. FYI, sunsets are lovely, but create quite a glare on the laptop screen.
Back at the hotel, and had to say goodbye to the Mercedes L Continued to take the Pacific Coast Highway back to SF, and then drove up then down the very famous Lombard Street. I nearly panicked and almost made Nik drive, but I pushed through. I think going up was worse, it is like you are driving up to the sky… needless to say I was gunnin’ it in the Mercedes. Going down was super winding and crooked, but you go slow enough it wasn’t that scary. There were random tourists everywhere along the route… I nearly had to take out some dumb lady just standing in the middle of the road taking a picture and gawking… once again… damn tourists!
That’s all for today, looking forward to our Jeep tour tomorrow with Hank of Golden Gate Jeep Tours.



Fyi, today's CC selections included Coconut Creme for Jano and Chocolate Mint for Nik. Having a great Day 3, will post about it tomorrow. Off to the game, Go Cards!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yay, Mystery Mansion! I was just telling some friends about it today. Eat a cupcake for me---how about lemon?!

JG

Anonymous said...

Technically, Illinois does have an ocean (well, lake)--Lake Michigan, which lately, is quite turquoisey blue--very Hawaii-like. I still can't believe people in Chicago can go to the beach. Everytime I see it I think I'm way far away from Illinois.

allison