This-and-That Day

Our last Thursday in California was spent doing a few different things.  First off, we all went to eat lunch at the Google main campus, which is an absolute necessity, just to feel insanely jealous of the awesome food, yet happy not to be there on a daily basis or I’d be fatter still.  After lunch, I took the kids to the Menlo Park swimming pool (they have a really warm instructional pool, where Anna used to go for weekly lessons) and afterwards we hung out on the adjacent playground for old times’ sake.  Around 5 pm we went to visit Katie and Dirk for the third and last time (no photos taken) before heading to home-base after dinner, where some of the old Stanford poker-crowd got together for an evening game.

Previous photos from the Menlo Park swimming pool: With CCSC families in 2006, swim lesson in 2007, swim lesson in 2008.

Sarah and Clarissa enjoying a morning chat-session with Sarah's family, showing off Clarissa new-found crawling-skillz.

Lunch at Google! 🙂 This is Charlie's (that's the name of this particular cafeteria).

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Icelander-Potluck

We lay-low the day after visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium – no need to overexert ourselves!!  The kids watched too much YouTube, and I went to have lunch with some of the Stanford girls (Sarah was dizzy and effectively comatose from sleep-deprivation, and couldn’t make it) while Augusto manned the fort.  At 5:30 pm we headed to a nearby park to meet a group of Icelanders for a potluck.  We still know quite a few Icelandic families in the area, but didn’t have time to individually pay them a visit – so we just asked them all to come to us!  The Lottas, Siggas, Sólveigs and Svavas showed up and we had a lovely time.  By the way, that same park was the scene of our goodbye potluck some two years ago.

Arnar and Sólveig brought their three kids, so much bigger than the last time we saw them!

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Monterey Bay Aquarium

On Tuesday, we continued our ‘greatest hits’ tour from ‘times gone by’ by visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  All of us drove down south in the minivan, except Finnur who went to work up in the city like the diligent worker that he is.  Our previous visits to the aquarium include 2001, 2004, 2006.  Finnur dove from McAbee beach (pictured below) in okt 2003, nóv 2003, 2004, 2005,  2006.

Walking down the hill from the parking lot to the main street. That building is a bit of a landmark. 🙂

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Ivan and Margo

Monday was beautiful like all the other days in California in late-May.  After all the weekend-activities, we mostly lay low and didn’t even leave Mountain View!  Anna picked lemons from Sarah and Augusto’s lemon tree, we made some too-sweet-lemonade, I got my eyes measured so that I could buy contacts, I took the kids to yet another familiar park, we then went to Whole Foods (this time beginning at the bakery), and then ended the day at Ivan and Margo Linscott’s.  (Ivan Ph.D. advised Sarah and me.  Examples of previous dinners at their house: 1, 2, 3  🙂 ).

A proud Anna with the lemons she picked. Boy, that brought back memories of when we used to have a hyperactive lemon-tree in our backyard back in the day…

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I(c/r)elanders

On this bright and beautiful Sunday we a) went to Fry’s and acquired a cheap android tablet, b) visited Lotta and Úlfar (Icelanders), and c) visited Imelda and Stuart (Irelanders… okok, Irish). 🙂

Anna playing on one of the display-tablets at Sunnyvale-Fry's. For some reason, most of them were off, and un-playable-with.

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Natural Bridges State Park

During our first ever Christmas/solstice vacation in California, our good friend Kerri (okok, her personal website is here) was kind enough to lend us her car while she went back east to visit her family.  At the time we hadn’t bought our own car yet so this meant FREEDOM!  We drove all over the place, and on one excursion we randomly stopped by the side of the main road north from Santa Cruz after seeing a sign for something (we suck at planning).  A short hike later we stumbled onto a path that led us to a glen full of monarch butterflies, which was awesome.  Sadly our camera equipment at the time was, erm, sad, so we did not get good pictures at all, but this should give you an idea.

We kept on walking and found a lovely beach with a holed-out rock off in the ocean, and it was awesome.  Yes, somehow we’d stumbled onto Natural Bridges State Park, and as the years went by, we kept coming back for more.  A quick search gave me these trips: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Fast-forward some eleven years (!!!) and we decided to visit the beach again, this time with Sarah and Augusto in tow.

Kids checking out the beach. It was warm out but a pretty cold breeze was coming off the ocean.

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Happy Hollow

Today’s kid-friendly excursion was to Happy Hollow, a fun-park/small-zoo down in San Jose.  Back in the day, I only visited the park two times, and it wasn’t terribly exciting, but I decided to give it another shot.

As it turned out, the park had been almost entirely redone since I last visited.  Sadly, we again arrived at the same exact time as a bunch of playschool- and daycare groups, so the vast majority of the morning was spent waiting in line for the a) small carousel, b) tremendously jerky mini-rollercoaster, c) very slow dragon-open-bus-thingy, with a stop at a very large climbing castle/structure.

After lunch the crowd grew much much sparser and the kids could start doing the same thing over and over again, without standing in a 20-30 minute line, which made everybody happier.  Due to this, we never made it to check out the animals because the park closes at 3 pm.

Ah well, at least a good time was had by all after lunch! 🙂

Some pictures from the day:

Anna and Bjarki finally on board the rollercoaster.

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Quiet Morning

Thursday!  How time keeps flying!  The morning started off being all calm and cuddly.  Shortly before noon I took the kids to yet another familar playground, before shipping Anna off to a playdate with one of her old friends.  I then left Bjarki with Augusto and kidnapped Sarah to go adults-only shopping at the Great Mall, which was by all accounts a great success!

Here are a few pictures from the quiet morning:

Crowded on the floor.

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Palo Alto Junior Museum etc.

After Tuesday’s all-day trip, I decided to spend Wednesday doing ‘quieter’ things… a lot of them. 🙂

Anna and Bjarki playing with the epic tennis-ball-moving-machine at the Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo. There is a whole second portion to it on the left side (not pictured) – tennis balls move between the two via a tube up in the ceiling.

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San Francisco Zoo

After a quiet Monday, I decided to take the kids up to San Francisco Zoo for a day-long outing.  I know many people prefer the Oakland Zoo, but we only went there once and, sure it was fine, but we ended up in SF Zoo multiple times (1, 2, 3, 4 at least) so it had a bigger ‘nostalgia factor’.  SF Zoo also has worse weather (it tends to be cloudy and pretty chilly), which can be nice when you’re out walking for an entire day.

Be warned that this page consists almost entirely of pictures of Anna and Bjarki in front of some animal or other!

Our first task of the day was to drop Finnur off at the SF-bound bus-stop on the main Google campus. Yes, Google runs a large bus-system in the Bay Area, shuttling its employees to and from work, and between offices, in WiFi-enabled buses. We would have given him a ride, except our minivan doesn't have WiFi, and the SF office and the Zoo happen to be on the opposite ends of the city.

After the customary 50 minute ride north, we finally parked in the 'secret' free parking lot by the Pacific Ocean. This sea-side parking lot has been getting smaller and smaller over the years, as the ocean erodes the coast away (see the concrete blocks in the background – there used to be parking spaces there), but the lot is only a short walk from the Zoo, where one otherwise has to pay $8 to park.

First up, the giraffes! Bjarki has unfortunately hit the age of 'hating the camera' and almost every single picture has him 'scowling'.

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