The Weekender

Ok folks! If you know what this picture is, then you know where we went for Turkey weekend. If not...let me give you a hint..." The Wall of Gum." Does it ring a bell now? San Luis Obispo! And yes...that is gum!!! An ALLEY OF GUM! We didn't dare walk through it, but we've been told it doesn't smell the greatest when you walk through it. Pretty gross huh? But it surely is a sight.

So why SLO? Well Awsome's relatives have been goin to SLO/Pismo for the past 12 years after Thanksgiving. They end up staying at a timeshare and do completely nothing...well not totally nothing, but bring their bikes, skateboards, laptops, XBOX what have you.... Since we're married now, it's been difficult to hang out w/ everyone for the holidays. So we decided to meet them half way. I've never driven to SLO so we thought it'd be a nice experience in renting a car and stopping at the Gilroy Outlets for a little bit before meeting them..since they always lag a bit anyways...

We got up at 6am to pick up our rental from Avis at SFO and it was a Malibu...boooooooooooo... anyhow..after driving it for 10 minutes...the smoke smell got to me...UGH...I felt so nauseated.. So I went back and we got an upgrade to a Hyundai Sonata! Oh man....I know it's a Hyundai, but it was NICE! XM Radio...wood appliques, CD player....so on w/ our trip... We ended up at the Gilroy Outlet and was in/out in 2 hours..right before the madness of honking cars and folks fighting for a parking spot....pretty scary nowadays...

We arrived in SLO at 12:30 and were starving. We decided to stay at The Peach Tree Inn which I would totally recommend. It's so cute and their continental breakfast is really good too. But since we hungry for lunch, we ate next door at Apple Farm. This is another good place to stay and they have a connecting restaurant which was really good as well.

We finally met up w/ the relatives and pretty much chilled the whole weekend. Actually ran and worked out on our mini-vacation. It's pretty nice to jog and see the ocean glistening in the sun. It's not a site or activity that I do on a regular basis...so it was great to take it in. We saw the infamous sea lions of Avila Beach..and be careful..we got pretty close and those things are HUGE!!!! They can attack you...

The weekend went pretty quick and it was already Sunday and we went to church together at Mission San Luis Obispo, which is the oldest mission in California...I was told... After mass we headed to eat at a Chinese Buffet place that our relatives always go too when they're in SLO, and I noticed there were a bunch of cute boutiques and stores and of course we didn't have the time to shop...we had to beat the traffic back to the Bay..but we had to make a stop at The House of Bread! They've got a jalapeno loaf and a parmesan basil that is to die for! They have in ROSEVILLE!!! That's a little closer and supposedly there's on in Fremont..but i'm not sure??

Oh and note..on the way back....ugly traffic!!!! Instead of 3 hours, it took us 4 1/2 hours...not cute.... at least we were able to stop at a Foster's Freeze and order a large vanilla chocolate dipped ice cream cone!!! :-)

Yes can you believe it! Oh man.... and it was good! It's called Xyclo and it's located on Piedmont Ave. in Oakland, close to Kaiser Hospital and across from Fenton's. Awsome and I always pass by this restaurant, but it's always full. So last Friday night, we decided to go right after work. Well now we're the early birds. It was 4:45pm and they don't open till 5pm. So instead of just standing in front of their door like a Mervyn's commercial waiting for them to open, we decided to walk around. We discovered another restaurant which doesn't post it's menu till 15 min. before they open!!! How crazy is that. Now that's some chiqueness. Deciding what you're going to serve the people just 1/2 hour before you open. It had a more Italian flair to it, but we had decided that our tastebuds were yearning for some rice.... or should I say some Asian flavor since we didn't even have any rice w/ our meal.

They finally opened up and we were the first ones in. The advantage that we had was that our food would come out piping hot...and it did! So what did we order? Well we ordered quite a bit for just the 2 of us, but we wanted to try everything. So for starters, we ordered the Double surpirse Roll which was like a fried spring roll wrapped up in a fresh spring roll. Does that make sense? Anyhow it was DELICIOUS! Next, was our Sweet & Sour Soup and not the Chinese version either. This has a twist to it, which surprises you. It's made up of fish, pineapple, celery, tomato and Asian dill in a sweet and sour broth. By this time we were getting pretty full, but we had 3 more dishes to go. We had the Butterfly Parwns in garlic herb noodles, and I would actually just order the noodles unless you like handling pealing the prawns...at least they gave us wipies. The noodles went really well w/ the Saigon Devil Wings which has a garlic caramel glaze which stuck to my teeth once in awhile. I would still order this. GOOD! And last, the Tumbling Dice, filet mignon cubes, sauteed and shaken w/ garlic and onions atop a mix salad with balsamic vinaigrette. The meat was sooooooooooooooooo tender!

So we practically finished everything and left sick since we didn't want to waste anything. So maybe for next time just 3 dishes to share unless we're in a group. For the both of us and for the 5 dishes, it roughly came to about $50 bucks. Not bad.....