Saturday we packed in a lot of activities. In the morning we met up with D’s parents at Country Way the Original in Fremont for breakfast. The building is in the shape of a Swiss chalet or Weinerschnitzel, take your pick. D’s parents had huge omelets, which they shared with us, and we had blueberry pancakes and french toast.

After breakfast we went to D’s brother’s new place in Fremont, which we hadn’t seen before. Our friend Janelle’s boyfriend happens to live in Fremont, too, so they stopped by despite their busy schedule.

k playing with her only cousin.

After they left, D’s cousins came over. We talked a bit and then we walked to a Chinese restaurant nearby. There was a lot of food, including this lobster:

We went back to the hotel and everyone was able to take a (much needed) nap this time. Our next activity was a birthday party for the three year old daughter of one of my friends from college. It was at Gold Star gymnasium in Mountain View. I wasn’t sure if k would participate, but she did!



k’s favorite: the rope swing!
(Note to self: Don’t dress k in jeans the next time she goes to a gym! I don’t know why I didn’t think about that.)

n had fun too. I think he’ll be the type to really enjoy these kind of places when he’s a little older. He is already showing daredevil tendancies.

I think D was the only parent that participated too. He is truly a kid at heart. Later told me he wanted to do a backflip on the trampoline but thought better of it. I’m glad. 🙂

For dinner we met up with D’s cousins again, this time in Sunnyvale at a Mediterranean restaurant called DishDash. D had beef kabobs and I had a chicken schwarma salad. We also shared the mixed appetizer plate. k liked the falafel. Probably the best Meditteranean restaurant we have been to. If D had a Mediterranean category on his list, it would be on there. When we got back I looked it up on Yelp and there are 742 reviews (4.5 stars)! There must be more Yelpers in Northern California. I don’t know of any restaurants in OC that has that many reviews. It was also nice to be able to talk more with D’s cousins, whom we don’t see too often.

So that was our trip. We made it home in six hours!

We just returned from a quick trip to the Bay Area. It was a nice little vacation and good to spend time with family and friends. And of course, good food.

First of all, we borrowed my dad’s GPS, and I’m so glad we did. That will definitely be our next purchase. It was so helpful since we were going to a lot of different places in (somewhat) unfamiliar territory. Yeah, we missed a few turns and heard the dreaded “Recalculating…” but it saved us a lot of hassle and arguments, I’m sure.

We drove up at 5:50 a.m. on Friday morning. First stop was Porto’s, a Cuban bakery in Burbank. We ordered the egg & chorizo sandwich on cuban bread, a medianoche sandwich, a mango smoothie, guava cheese pastry, chocolate croissant and raspberry mousse. We’ve been here a few times, and it never fails to impress. It isn’t surprising that there was a line, even before 7 a.m.

We made two more stops and arrived in Fremont at 12:20 p.m. The kids were OK–not too bad, but not too great, either. I’m not complaining about 6.5 hours, though. That was pretty good.

We had lunch at Sala Thai, a Yelp find.
We ordered the pad see ew and crispy garlic fish. Very flavorful. It made D’s List!

Then we checked into our hotel, the Hilton in Newark/Fremont, which we booked through Hotwire for $55/night (around $65 with taxes). Although you can see it from I-880, I couldn’t hear the freeway from our room. As D noted, it served a very “eclectic” clientele. After D checked in, I was carrying n and k was walking in front of me, and one of the hotel clerks called out to me, “If you’re interested, there’s a Chuck E. Cheese next door!” I thought that was funny.

After unsuccessfuly trying to take a nap in our hotel room, we picked up D’s cousin in Santa Clara. She is visiting from Singapore, and is the main reason we made the trip up north. It was the first time I had ever met her, although we’ve hung out with her brother before. We warned her we wanted to eat early and casual because of the kids, and she was game. We ate at Lawrence Plaza food court in Santa Clara, which is located in a Little Korea. I ended up ordering teriyaki chicken and japchae from BBQ Town (not very Korean, I know, but I was sharing with the kids, so I didn’t want anything too spicy, alhtough it did come with kim chee), while D had bimbimbap and his cousin had spicy tofu soup from the stall next door. D’s cousin had stopped in New York before coming to the Bay Area, and brought some gifts for k & n. k liked that she walked with them after dinner. It was nice hearing about all of the sightseeing she had done and plans to do and hearing about D’s other relatives that we don’t see too often, if at all.

There’s a dessert place with funky seating. We decided to take pictures there.