California Trip Part 1

Alright! We've been here for a few days now, but I haven't posted very many pictures. To be fair, we're still getting used to taking lots of pictures, let alone doing things with them. So I'm kind of taking it one step at a time. :) We're staying at this beautiful, Mediterranean-style hotel called "Hotel Zico" in Mountain View. It's about a 5-minute drive from the Mozilla home office, where Jeff has been working this week. This is what you first see as you walk up to the front of the hotel:

The rest of the walk to the lobby is shaded nicely by palm trees, and has such a calm, soothing feel. My two favorite parts of our hotel room are: 1-We have a patio outside our room with a table and chairs, which I've used a couple of times. It's lovely outside, so the patio is a fantastic feature. AND 2-Our bathroom sink. For real. I've never seen a sink like this one. I've noticed that I seem to be more impressed by interesting sinks than most people (I make a big deal about them whenever I see one, but Jeff almost never sees the same appeal), but this sink blows them all out of the water!

So not only is it beautiful, but when you push the long knob to the side....

...water cascades from the blue disc into the bowl like a waterfall!
 And this time, even Jeff was impressed!
I want to have one of these in our future home someday. I love this sink SO MUCH!

So I geek out about amazing sinks, but Jeff geeks out about actual geek stuff. Since we were in the neighborhood, he really wanted to make a geeky pilgrimage to both the Apple and Google campuses:

The main Apple building sits at "1 Infinite Loop" which doubles as an inside programming joke that Jeff explained to me, but I doubt I could re-explain adequately.

What a handsome guy!

He's just so excited to be here!

This was the sign on the bathroom, which cracked me up and made me nostalgic simultaneously.

And here's Google:

The Google Campus is enormous! Its size rivals that of small college campuses, and even some University campuses I've seen (I'm lookin' at you, UVU)

Our Google visit was actually just a drive-by on our way home from one of the shopping centers. Jeff said he didn't really need to get out of the car, so we didn't. 

After our Apple adventure, we went to this great shopping area called "Santana Row" which is extremely impressive. I'm embarrassed to say that until Tuesday night, I'd never been inside an Anthropologie store. But, for my first experience, this one was perfect.

 I loved being inside of Anthropologie! There are so many beautiful things to see, touch and smell inside that amazing store. Jeff and I both had a good time looking/touching/smelling around for the better part of an hour before I realized I hadn't eaten in a few hours and I would be very sick if I didn't eat immediately. But we did find the most wonderful-smelling candles! Before I smelled these candles, I used to just shake my head in disbelief at beautiful Ann Perkins (Parks and Rec, anyone?) who, after being dumped by Chris Traeger, dyed a streak of her hair pink and "bought $700 worth of candles from Anthropologie." I still believe it to be a very unhealthy thing to do, and most certainly indicative of a larger problem, but if anyone is going to spend a substantial amount of money on candles, they should definitely be from Anthropologie. For real. I've been trying to devise strategies for how to get me some of those ever since we left the store. There are legit holidays coming, too! Easter, Mother's Day...Earth Day? I would appeal to whichever holiday will be most likely to get me those candles. I'm not even picky.

Moving on, there was also an H&M on Santana Row, and I was so stoked to shop there! I know that Utah recently got its own H&M, but I haven't gotten a chance to shop there since it opened, so why not enjoy the one right here in front of me? I found some awesome tank tops to wear over my half tees, during what will most likely be the hottest summer of my life, and I even found a gorgeous Easter dress! I'll post pics when I actually wear it for Easter, and I can barely wait. It's so beautiful. So H&M was a huge success! ...For me, not so much for Jeff. Oddly enough, this particular store only sold women's clothing, so Jeff was pretty disappointed. He's been looking forward to shopping at H&M for months. Oh well, guess we'll just have to wait 'til we get back to Utah and head up to Salt Lake for a special shopping trip (life's so hard, right?).

After we left Anthropologie (remember my immediate need to eat?), we searched like crazy for a parking spot (we used up the time limit on the one we originally snagged) so we could eat at Pluto's, the cheapest restaurant on Santana Row. We weren't finding parking quickly enough, and I was starving, so we decided to leave the Row and find something on our way back to Mountain View. Fortunately, we spotted a Cheesecake Factory directly across the street (Big Bang Theory, anyone?) and decided to go for it. We parked, got right in, and found out we had to wait for 10 minutes. Normally, that wouldn't be an issue, but my body was screaming for sustenance, so 10 minutes may as well have been an eternity. Luckily, they had a takeout counter that also sold small loaves of bread for 3.50 and Jeff snagged me one. I didn't mind looking out of place or tacky as I ravenously tore into my loaf of bread. I was just so happy to have food that I ignored every sideways glance from the strangers around me and chowed down! Once we got to our table, a nice man next to us asked if I brought the bread in with me, which he thought was a great idea. Fortunately by that point, I had already eaten a decent amount of the bread so I was feeling really friendly and told him how we bought it when we were waiting because I was just starving! I'd hate to think how that might've gone if I hadn't gotten enough food in me. It could have turned ugly really quickly. Oh, and since I'd never previously been in a Cheesecake Factory, I had no idea that the waitresses dressed nothing like Penny does on Big Bang! They wore white shirts and white jeans with white aprons on top! Weird! Especially because white isn't even practical, but oh well. They do what they want I guess.

After dinner, we drove back over to our hotel because I was completely exhausted. We watched some TV and went to bed by like 9:30 or 10. I've gotten to bed early most nights this week because I have to wake up early enough to take Jeff to work in the morning, and that gets to be really tough if I haven't gotten enough sleep.

Okay-that's it for Part 1 of our trip. I'll work on Part 2 and get it to you soon. Thanks for reading!