San Fran

Garlic Ice Cream... Yum. And, check out all the left-over go-cups we found outside one of the apartments in Santa Clara. Perhaps we don't want to live next door to all the frat boys!

On our way to San Francisco, we stopped in L.A. to visit Jaione for breakfast. Somehow, we managed to miss the almost mythically bad L.A. traffic (probably has to do with us using the carpool lane). I'm already looking forward to meeting up with her again for a camping trip in central Cali in August (Jaione, be sure to keep me in the loop for this)

On our way north, we finally stopped at In-N-Out Burger, one of our favorite fast food restaurants in the US (Greg still thinks the burgers at Five Guys, in DC, are better). We had the Double-Double Animal Style (of course), Fries Animal Style, and chocolate milk shake-- yup, we were really healthy. But, man those animal style onions, cheese, and sauce are just SO good.

We diverted to Berkeley to pick up my sister, Laura who had just finished her PhD oral exams making her an official PhD candidate. She had been drinking since 1pm, so needed a ride home to San Fran. Unfortunately, it took us about 1 hour to get from San Jose to Berkeley and another hour to get to San Fran-- looks like we'll have to learn to deal with traffic when we're living in the South Bay.

The next day we celebrated Cinco De Mayo (even though it was the 3rd of May) with a gourmet picnic lunch in Dolores Park. We all got very sunburned as we listened to great Mariachi bands and saw Mexican dancers. We also talked to a Boston native who assured us there are over 400,000 Red Sox fans in the Bay Area and even offered to give us a free subscription to the NY Times or San Fran Chronical. That made Greg feel much better about moving away from the east coast sports culture. On Sunday, we finally made plans with the Spanish School in Guatemala and went out to eat to celebrate Laura's successful exams (thanks to parents for sponsoring this amazing meal). We stuff ourselves with scallops, lamb, raw tuna, duck confite, wine, sidecards, crepes, sorbet, and crisp.

On Monday, we treked he 45 minutes to San Jose to explore our new hood. Greg is officially going to Santa Clara for Law School starting on August 11! Santa Clara is a stone's throw from San Jose so we'll probably live near downtown San Jose. We were of coursed incredibly depressed by the high prices and crappy apartments, but, at least we found some cute neighborhoods. We'll have a big job finding a decent place to live when we get back from Central America.

To forget our apartment woes, we went out for big burritos and beer in the Mission. We met up with Emi and Mari- both of who just found very nice 1 bedroom/studio apartments for a decent price, so that gave us some hope. It'll also be awesome to already have some friends in the area when we move.

The next morning, we headed off for Portland. After a few random stops at Harry and David's outlet store and a random Southern Oregon winery, we made it to the end of our road trip, Portland, OR.