As this June-July are the summer holiday, we finally decided to spend our family holiday in California too.
Beside San Diego, we planned to go to Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Napa Valley and San Jose.
We were welcomed with such great weather in L.A and the house we rented was located in such nice neighborhood and the place called The Grove. An opened air space where some cafes, restaurants, shops lied in harmony with the greeneries (surrounded by parks) and water.
It is close to the Farmers Market a unique way of having meals in the market with variety of choices.
A concept that we do not find in Asia yet. Our favorite stall is Banana Leaves that sell Indian and some other Asian food.
We took the city tour to cover the Hollywood and Beverly Hills area as my pre teen one got so excited about it and a little expectation (or imagination) that we could bump with any celebrity that she used to watch from Disney and Nickelodeon 's channels.
We went to the sexiest beach I ever found : Santa Monica! it is such lovely jubilee beach with all those amazing fun places! The beach is pretty, clean, with a great view of pedestrian walks to the ocean, although only my first one and my husband dare to swim because it's cold!
Overall, we were so happy in Los Angeles due to the warm weather and the hip of the city for shopping and eating in some different concept of green mall that we rarely have it in Asia.
We drove almost 7 hrs from L.A to S.F and we reached S.F in the evening time and it was cold. A quite different temperatur to L.A (it was summer!). L.A was around 28-20 deg C fr day time to nite time while S.F got below 20-10 deg C fr day time to nite time and very dry.
The wind was kind of too strong me, who used to live in such hot tropical country with such humidity.
My weakness in cold weather resulted in the mood swing (drama!). Needed longer time to adjust while my husband daniel and kids seemed enjoy much the weather.
We spent the first day for a city tour and found the Ghirardeli Square is a unique place to explore with such lovely views to the ocean. That was sunday and it was crowded everywhere. Had that change of mind so many times that day to switch to other area but we did not have any idea yet where to go.
Anyway, we were just went around here and there and ended up in Japan town for a yummy diner.
The next day we went to San Jose-Rage Water Park. It only took 1hr drive to south east of San Francisco but it was already hot, a hot sunny day. We went back to SF in the evening time and watched the 4th July fireworks party at Crissy field. It is a great place view for taking pictures, it is an area of Golden gate parks along the coast line and the yacht harboring has added the greatness of it.
After San Jose, the following day, we went to Napa Valley, we could not go on vineyard tour due to the mismatched time and bringing the kids (we did not know the rules of the tour) but somehow we visited the beautiful Oxbow public market where we had such great wine, food and coffee!
We went around some villages around there that covered by all grape plantations. Even the public market has the parking lot with some grape bush!
Went back to SF, we decided to spend the last day for a quick view at Twin peaks close to our rent house then planned to have another city tour by the cable car.
In fact we were stuck in a heaven called Sausalito. It is located just across the Golden Gate.
It was very windy and foggy when we reached the Vista Point of the Golden Gate where we took some beautiful pictures there.
