Edmonton Trip - Day 6, 7 & 8

Day 6 - Monday I hung finally caught up on reading blogs, after being away from that for a few days, as well as met up with friends David and Kylie. I did end up going to Da De O a New Orleans style 50s Diner/Bar on Whyte Ave in Edmonton. It was a pretty cool place and I got to try their spicy specialty beer locally brewed by Alley Kat The Charlie Flint's lager brewed with Chili powder.

Day 7 - On Tuesday I met up with Mackenzie at Remedy Cafe in Old Strathcona. In the evening my Dad and I went over to Uncle Myron and Aunt Betty's place for a delicious dinner, great conversation, and watched the Edmonton Oilers lose.

Day 8 - Early Wednesday morning my Dad and I left Edmonton and headed back down to Washington. We had weird weather on and off, sometimes driving in snow, sometimes driving in perfectly dry and nice weather, and sometimes driving in rain. We stopped at the Real Canadian Superstore once more before leaving the country, this time in Airdrie. We stopped in Radium Hot Springs for a quick half hour swim in the hot springs and saw some beautiful scenery throughout the mountain areas. After crossing the US/Canada border we stopped in Spokane Valley for a dinner at Boston's Gourmet Pizza (a US spin-off to the popular Canadian restaurant). We took a detour on the way to Yakima by heading through the Tri-Cities area.

Edmonton Trip - Day 4&5

Day 4 of my trip was the first full day in Edmonton. Along with catching up with the Jones' my Dad and I went to visit my Grandma in the hospital. It was good seeing her, of course not in these circumstances, but good nonetheless. After the hospital visit we headed back to the Jones' where I caught up on some Canadian TV classics (such as The Littlest Hobo and Hockey Night in Canada). My Dad and I went to dinner with Uncle Myron and Aunt Betty and had a nice evening with them. We ended the evening like the old days with a dip in the hot tub.

Day 5 was Sunday which included church service at First Church, (Canadian) Thanksgiving turkey meal at the church afterwards, and a quick shopping trip to the Great Canadian Superstore where I picked up a bunch of Canadian only food products including Just Right cereal, Dill Pickle/Salt & Vinegar chips, and some Crispy Crunch bars. The rest of teh afternoon was spent playing with Marcus and Hailey, and Curtis & Nicole (#2) picked me up in the evening to head to Jeff Gould's birthday party where we had some delicious DQ Ice Cream cake and played Wii.

Edmonton Trip - Day 2 & 3

Day 2 and 3 of my trip was mainly traveling. After spending the morning seeing a bit more of San Francisco I took BART to the Oakland Airport where I caught my Southwest flight to Seattle. Thanks to Andrew Ellenberger for being a great host.

When in Seattle I caught the airport shuttle over to Yakima where my Mom picked me up and drove me to their home. We did some catching up and tries to get to bed at a decent time as we had an early morning.

Day 3 started with my Dad and I dropping my Mom off at the airport shuttle. We started out on thwarted road at about 5am for Edmonton. We drove through Spokane, Cranbrook, Crowsnest Pass, Calgary, Red Deer, and finally Edmonton. Great driving conditions throughout except a full hour of traffic tie-up on the Interstate east of Ellensberg, WA due to a crash. We stopped in Calgary for dinner at Montana's and eventually arrived in Edmonton at our destination of the Jones' at about 11:30pm.

Edmonton Trip - Day 1

Day 1 of my trip to Edmonton was quite packed. I left my apartment at 6am when I was picked up by Mike who dropped me off at the train station in downtown Fresno. I got on my train which I rode all the way to Richmond, CA in the north bay area. In Richmond I transferred over to BART which I rode a couple stops south to Berkeley. Here I walked around both the city and the University quite a bit while carrying my full backpack (which was a great workout with all the hills!).

I sat down for lunch at Dara Thai / Lao Cuisine where I ate a delicious meal. After some more exploring the campus and simple relaxing on a grassy area I headed back to the BART station. I caught the train down into San Francisco where I would be meeting Andrew Ellenberger. I walked through the financial district to the Trans-American Pyramid where he works. After meeting up we walked through some areas of northern San Francisco including Little Italy, the Wharf, Pier 39, and the Embarcadero. One of my highlights was finding a mini-donuts place on Pier 39. They were delicious.

We caught the street car and bus down to Andrew's place where we dropped off our bags. We headed down to Haight Ashbury (which is close to his place) where we found an Irish Pub. I had a reuben sandwich and a Molson Canadian. We made one more stop at a pub before heading back to Andrew's place to sleep.

Photos from East Coast Trip

Check out my flickr stream for my latest pictures from my East Coast trip last month. I put up only a few, and hopefully it will give you an idea of the trip.

East Coast Trip - Day 11

Today we left New Haven in the morning and drove to Providence, RI. In Providence we caught a commuter rail train into Boston. After checking into our hotel, which is right beside Fenway Park, we started exploring Boston.

We walked around and explored a lot walking along the freedom trail. This is a brick and painted trail throughout Boston that takes you to a number of historical sites. We saw things such as old churches, cemeteries where famous revolutionary figures are burried, and old houses and meeting halls. It also took us through Boston's Little Italy, where we stopped at Mike's Pastry which had a huge selection of delicious Italian pastries.

For dinner, and to round out our day, we went to Boston Beer Works right across the street from Fenway where we sampled the local cuisine and brews.

East Coast Trip - Day 10

Today was a much more relaxing day than most days so far in the trip.

Chris, Tim and myself hung out in New Haven. We made another trip to both Ikea and Target to pick up a few more items for Tim. We also headed over to Yale and got a tour of the campus during the daytime.

We also helped Tim build a bunch of the furniture he had bought. After that we met up with one of Tim's classmates in his program at Yale and headed down to the Yale bookstore and a restaurant nearby. We ate at a place called Thali Too, which is a Vegetarian Indian cuisine place. It was quite delicious.

We ended the night at a coffee shop where we figured out plans for the next couple days in Boston.

East Coast Trip - Day 9

Today was day 2 in New York City and we had a lot of fun. We started the day of by catching the commuter train into New York City again. Our first order of business was to take the subway uptown from Grand Central Station to Central Park.

After misreading the subway map we ended up taking an express train too far uptown and into Harlem. After taking a train back down to the right station we walked through a small portion of Central Park seeing Strawberry Fields and Tavern on the Green. Our goal was to see a bit of the park but also we needed to head down to Times Square to stand in line at TKTS.

TKTS is a little shop in Times Square that acts as sort of a clearing house for Broadway show tickets. You can buy tickets for shows the day of, at 20% to 50% off the box office price. We waited in line for about an hour and purchased tickets for the Broadway Musical "9 to 5" by Dolly Parton.

After getting our tickets we headed down on the Subway to the Financial District where we saw ground zero, New York Stock Exchange, and an old Federal building where George Washington was sworn in as the first President of the US.

We grabbed lunch and headed uptown on the subway again to do some shopping at H&M since we don't have one in Fresno. We then walked the rest of the way back to Times Square on Broadway where our theater was.

After the musical we headed back out through Times Square and the throngs of people to the subway. We caught a train downtown again to Little Italy where we had planned to eat a late dinner. When we got back up to street level we found it to be pouring rain and lightning and thundering outside. This was shocking because we had left the street no more than 15 - 20 minutes earlier and it was completely different.

We walked a couple blocks in the rain trying to stand under awnings as much as possible to stay a little dry and found a little Italian restaurant that looked good. After dinner we walked through little Italy a bit more as the rain had stopped. We too the subway back up to Grand Central to catch the commuter train back to New Haven.

East Coast Trip - Day 8

Today was spent in New York City. We drove to New Haven Union Station, which is about 5 minutes from Tim's place and caught a commuter train into the city. It took about 1 hour 40 minutes to get there and when we got to New York's Grand Central Station it was about 11am so we decided to stop for lunch at a deli.

After that we walked around a bit and saw St. Patricks Cathedral, New York Public Library, Bryant Park, Rockefeller Center, and a whole bunch of Midtown Manhattan. We decided to go see the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) where we spent a few hours. I really enjoyed the special exhibit by Ron Arad, which was full of very unique and interesting design examples, including a lot of chairs.

After the MoMA we hopped on the subway and went over to Greenwich Village and had a delicious Thai dinner at a restaurant called Isles. We walked around that area saw Washington Square Park, NYU, and a bit of SoHo and NoHo and got some Gellato for dessert.

We hopped back on the Subway and headed back to Midtown to check out Times Square at night. It was very impressive and a lot bigger than I imagined. Almost too many people. We walked around there and walked back to Grand Central Station to catch our train back to New Haven.

New York City (and specifically Manhattan) is very neat. My biggest perception is the huge numbers of tall buildings. I've been to a lot of big cities before but nothing like this.

East Coast Trip - Day 7

There wasn't a lot of traveling today, I didn't even leave New Haven, CT today.

After sleeping in until 8am, we lounged around Tim's apartment until we headed over to Ikea to pick up a few more items for Tim's place. I love Ikea and was really looking forward to going. We at breakfast at the restaurant there and did our shopping and then put together all the furniture when we got back.

I took a bit of time to do some laundry across the street before dinner. We headed down to the Booster Square area of town and had dinner at Pepe's Pizzeria. Apparently New Haven is known for their brick oven pizza. It was very delicious and the pizzas were extremely large.

Our friend Janna who is currently attending school at the University of Connecticut joined us for the evening and there was lots of memories and reminiscing going on. After we said our good-byes, Tim, Chris and myself planned out our game plan for the next couple days in New York City.

East Coast Trip - Day 6

I shall call today Ivy League day. After waking up this morning we left Washington DC and headed up towards New England.

A little further north of Philadelphia, PA we stopped in Princeton, NJ. We have friend, Eric Sunderland who is attending seminary at Princeton Theological Seminary. He took us on a tour through that campus and also Princeton University campus. Very beautiful campus surroundings and buildings. After eating lunch, catching up and touring around we headed up to our final destination, New Haven, CT.

When we arrived in New Haven we helped Tim unload his stuff, picked up a few more necessities from Target, and installed his new window a/c. After that we took off walking to downtown for dinner and to see a bit of Yale University. We ate at a small local burger joint and saw a few of the University buildings in the dark.

East Coast Trip - Day 5

It's hard to believe we've only finished the 5th day of the trip. We've seen so much, experienced a lot, and visited so many states.

Today we woke up after sleeping in until 9 (even though we still only got 7 hours of sleep). We had breakfast and walked two blocks to the DC metro stop by Chris's place. We took the metro to Capitol Hill and stopped into the Congressman's office for whom Chris works. We headed over to the Capitol building where Chris gave us a tour. We got lunch at a pub afterwards where I got the fish and chips.

We had some time to kill so we walked over to the Supreme Court building and the Folger Shakespeare Library. We then headed over to the Library of Congress where we had a tour scheduled. DC is a really neat city, and I think I really like the idea of a whole city dedicated to a nation's capital.

My biggest observation of the city is that Washington DC has been, since independence, a city built to show the American people and the rest of the world that even though we're a relatively young nation, we want to be taken seriously. The best example of this is in some of the art in these beautiful buildings. In the Library of Congress there is a mural on the ceiling that portrays a number of nude men in the style of classical olympics/sports, but instead of discus throwing or wrestling they are playing baseball. It shows this contrast of roots with the old world and a sense of modernity and forward thinking.

After the tours we went to dinner at Buca di Beppo near Dupont Circle followed by dessert at Kramerbooks & afterwords cafe & grill. We headed back to Chris's place via the Metro and called it a day.

East Coast Trip - Day 4

Today was very eventful. We woke up in Indianapolis and drove through the following states: Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. WV and MD were both first-time visits for me. It was only a 9.5 hour drive today, but the last day always seems to take the longest.

Our initial destination was Annapolis, MD to drop off Harrison and his brother who were our traveling buddies for the trip. Harrison is starting his Masters program at St. John's College there. We helped him unpack the car then we drove downtown to check out the city. We went for dinner at a great little restaurant where I got a delicious crab cake. We walked down the main street afterwards where we got ice cream, I got toasted coconut ice cream in a freshly made waffle cone. I also purchased some fudge. We walked around the city a little more checking out the state capitol building (Annapolis is the capital of Maryland) and walked around St. John's College, as well as the waterfront. Annapolis is a very pretty town and reminded me a lot of Europe.

Tim and I then took the short (half hour) trip to Washington DC where we were meeting Chris. We hung out a bit at his place and then decided to head down to the mall and Capitol Hill to see the monuments. It was already 10pm so there weren't many other people, so we got a lot of the monuments to ourselves, and I got a lot of great night shot pictures. We saw the capitol building where congress meets, the Washington monument, the White House, the Lincoln memorial, and the mall as well as a number of buildings, museums, statues, and monuments along the mall. We walked at least 4 miles to see all of that. Everything was really pretty at night and I can't wait to see them again in the daytime.

East Coast Trip - Day 3

Today we woke up in Tulsa, OK. The family we stayed with owns 4 Subway franchises, so he took us to one of his restaurants to make lunch for our trip.

We drove through 4 states today: Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. One of the highlights was driving through St. Louis and seeing the large arch.

After arriving in Indianapolis to end our traveling for the day we stopped at Qdoba for some burritos. We are staying at another La Quinta tonight, and just from seeing the setup in the lobby, its looking like the continental breakfast should be a little better than the last one.

Tim and I are up to 39 different license plates in our game. We did get a plate from Mexico today, and we saw a bunch more semi-trucks from Ontario (although we saw Ontario the first day, and we haven't seen any other Canadian provinces yet).

Tim and I took a swim in the hotel pool before settling in for the night. No fireflies tonight though...

East Coast Trip - Day 2

With only about 9 hours on the road today, we had a much more relaxing day compared to 13 hours on the road yesterday.

We started the day with the continental breakfast at La Quinta. It was ok, a little disappointing because a lot of the food (muffins, bagels, waffles) were pre-packaged and not fresh.

We left New Mexico, where I didn't have a lot of cell coverage, and headed into the Texas panhandle. We ate lunch in Amarillo and headed out and got to Oklahoma and stopped for dinner in Oklahoma City. We met up with our traveling buddy's Dad who happened to be in Oklahoma City on business. We ate at a nice "Italian Urban Cafe" called Trattoria Il Centro, where I had a smoked chicken pizza that had wild mushrooms and carmelized onions. We finished off the meal with some Vanilla Gellato.

We made the relatively short drive to Tulsa where we headed to the house of a family friend of our traveling buddies. We jumped into the pool and hot tub where we relaxed, chatted and watched the fireflies light up the backyard.

East Coast Trip - Day 1

Well its the end of a long and slightly exhausting day. We left Fresno at about 7:15am and were in a total of 3 states, California, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Other than driving for 13 hours there wasn't a whole lot that happened today. Tim and I started playing the license plate game, we have 19 different states and provinces. In Flagstaff, AZ we had a bit of trouble with our GPS units while trying to get back to the Interstate. (We ended up at a quarry at one point!)

Tonight we are staying at a La Quinta in Albuquerque, NM. They have a pretty good continental breakfast apparently so we will be partaking in that tomorrow.

East Coast Trip

Tomorrow I leave on an East Coast trip with my friend Tim. We will be caravaning with another friend (Harrison) and his brother. Tim will be starting his doctoral program at Yale, which is why he is going and I thought it would be fun to tag along.

We are driving through Albuquerqe, NM, Oklahoma City, OK, Indianapolis, IN. We'll be visiting New York, Washington DC, and Boston, as well as New Haven, CT while over there.

I will be twittering, blogging, and using Google Latitude throughout the trip to keep you up to date. Feel free to follow along!

Another Trip to Edmonton

I am flying out this afternoon from Fresno to Edmonton for a few days. My Grandfather passed away quite peacefully yesterday afternoon. My brother Jonathan and I were going to be meeting my parents up in Edmonton this weekend to spend some time with my Grandfather as he was very sick and we knew he didn't have a lot of time left. Unfortunately we missed getting to see him this weekend by about a day. The funeral will be sometime early this week.

My Grandfather will surely be missed, and we all love him very much. He is in a much better place now.

Trip to Canada

A week ago I had the opportunity to fly up to Edmonton, AB for the weekend to visit family and friends and spend some time with my Grandpa. It was a both a happy and sad trip, but I'm really glad I got to go.

A long with spending quality time each day with my Grandpa, I visited with Grandma, Uncle Myron & Aunt Betty, the Jones, Tim G., and Mackenzie. As well, I saw a lot of other people at Church and those that came to visit my Grandpa while I was at the hospital. I drove by all the houses I lived in while in Edmonton, and I drove by all 4 schools I attended in Edmonton.

It was a big step for me, as it was the first time I had ever rented a car. Now that I am 25 I can rent a car like any other adult. The other parts of the trip weren't anything new as far as traveling is concerned though.

Edmonton sure is a growing city as I saw by all the construction (LRT expansion and cranes all over the city) and I realize every time I go how much I miss Edmonton and all the people I know up there.

10 000 miles

In the last month I finally hit the 10 000 mile mark on my Smart Car! It took about 11 months for this feat, and what it means is I was recommended to take my car to the dealership to have the car's first oil change and 10 000 mile service/check-up.

Unfortunately, the closest dealership (and the dealership from where I bought my car) is in San Jose, a mere 2 1/2 to 3 hour drive. It is Smart Center Stevens Creek and it is attached to and a part of the Porsche dealership next door. I was lucky enough to have my brother Andrew come along with me. We made the trek up to San Jose, got to the dealership at 9:00am and let the dealership do there thing. I got the car back shortly before noon, and we were on our way.

The complete work-up cost me about $160.

The dealership did the following on my car:

• Oil/Filter change
• Checked the lights
• Checked and topped up the fluids
• Checked system components such as wiper blades/hoses/belts/horn/clutch
• Checked battery
• Checked tires
• Checked brakes
• Checked underbody and exterior trim
• Washed the exterior of the car
• Vacuum/clean the interior

I also received a "Know Your Vehicle" pamphlet, which has a lot of good information such as tire tread and brake condition. I'm not sure if this was particularly specific to this dealership or not. The car wash was also nice, and I felt very appreciated by the staff at the Smart Dealership as well as the Porsche Dealership.