4th of July Fireworks aboard the USS Hornet!

USS HORNET

Monday, July 4th, 2011

The USS Hornet is one of the most decorated ships in naval history!

This blog entry is dedicated to my brother and dad, who both served in the US navy!  What a great place to celebrate 4th of July!

Time:  11AM- 10:00PM

Live music from 2:00 to 9:00PM

FIREWORKS at 9:15PM

Children's activities such as carnival games, jump house, and interactive games!

Explore the ship!

Free parking, see www.us_hornet.org/visit/car fro more information.

Price-  $20.00

Or, free for members, see www.uss-hornet.org 

Summer Solstice Today!

Summer solstice is the longest day of the year!  

What:  Family summer solstice in Alameda County, CA

When:  Tuesday, June 21st

Where:  Summer solstice will be celebrated in two spots for families.

* Tilden Nature Area has a summer solstice celebration from 6:30-9:00PM.  The event will be hosted by naturalist, Bethany Facendini.  Activities are the following:  a 1.5 nature hike, a campfire, and crafts for children.  Reservations required, please call tilden park for availability.

*  Crab Cove interpretive center, Alameda, also has a summer solstice event.   The activities at this event are for children 3 to 8 and their siblings.  This event will be hosted by supervising naturalist Sharol Nelson Embry.  The event will feature games, songs, stories, and a hike.  This event does not require a reservation.  The address of the event is 1252 Mckay Ave, off Central Avenue in Alameda.

Summer solstice websites:

For information on defining summer solstice, see:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/summer_solstice

news.discovery.com/space/what-is-the-summer-solstice.html

news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/06/100621-summer solstice-2011

Also, for more information on upcoming summer events in the San Francisco Bay Area, take a look at

www.insidebayarea.com 

Best Pizza in California

Best pizza in California?  My vote goes to Zachary's Pizza in Oakland.  Their deep dish stuffed chicken pizza is legendary in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.  Always fresh.  Tons of tomatoes.  Lots of gooey cheese.  Fantastic.  Definitely the best Chicago-style pizza on the West Coast.  It is also employee-owned, and they have great service.  Though you should be prepared to wait for a table for a long time if you come anytime after 5pm.

Folks can talk about new artesian pizza-places all they like, but Zachary's takes home the blue ribbon for great pizza out west.

For another take on the best pizzas in Berkeley, check out http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/inberkeley/detail?entry_id=90745&tsp=1

Note - I obviously disagree with their ranking of Zachary's.

Sunset Magazine Weekend

Sunset Magazine is having its open house weekend this weekend, June 4 and 5 from 10-5.  Sunset's offices are in Menlo Park on Middlefield Road.  

For details, see the Sunset Celebration Weekend website.  Sunset opens up its test kitchen, which is great to see.  They have food booths and wine tasting.  Sunset Magazine's food editor, Margo True, discusses her book The One Block Feast.
















Sunset's exhibits feature information about:

• Urban homesteading
• Chicken coops (seriously fun!)
• Making cheese
• BBQ demonstrations
• Sunset test kitchen tours
• Gardening tips and examples

This is a great event, despite the rain the Bay Area has been experiencing this weekend.  I went yesterday, and the rain didn't do anything to stop the fun.

Jumeirah Essex House

Wanted to follow up our post from a few weeks back about our stay in NY with some pictures from the hotel.

Here's a view facing downtown (from the first room when we checked in, which later got too smoky to stay in):

Another angle, again facing downtown:

Here's the view from the room we ended up in for the rest of our stay.  This faces towards the Time Warner Center:

A view facing the southwest corner of Central Park, with the traffic circle by the Time Warner Center lit up.  The building to the right is the Trump International Hotel.

 
A view in daylight, again facing the Time Warner Center.  The Mandarin Oriental is in the towers, and the Trump hotel is off to the right.

And here's a daylight view facing the Park (the trees were still quite bare in early March).

1,000 Places to See Before You Die

Read 1,000 Places to See Before You Die by Patricia Schultz.  I'm also including a link to 1,000 Places to See Before You Die in the United States and Canada.  

One example of the recommended excursions in this book is Nimmo Bay Resort, in British Columbia.  On pg. 752, Schultz describes Nommo Bay Resort, writing, "There are no roads leading to Nimmo Bay, an eighteen-guest wilderness resort that sits on the remote, undeveloped, and largely unsung western coast of Canada.  It is open May through October.

New York, New York - The Jumeirah Essex House

We recently returned from a trip back East, where we spent over a week in Manhattan.  While there, we stayed at the Jumeirah Essex House, which is on Central Park South (59th Street).

Our stay started out a bit rough.  About two hours after we checked in, our room started to reek of cigarette smoke.  Someone in a nearby room must have been lighting up.  While we don't like to complain, the smoke is a problem for us -- my son and I both end up with breathing issues when we're exposed to smoke for longer than a few minutes.

So, we asked to switch rooms.  After a bit of debate about where the smoke might be coming from, and whether the smell was really that bad, they moved us to a new room lower down in the hotel.  The new room didn't have much of a view -- we were at about tree level, facing the leave-less trees of winter in Central Park.  The new problem -- when I tried to pull the shades up to see the view, the shades themselves actually fell apart and broke entirely.  And no, I wasn't pulling that hard.

At this point, I'm happy to say that the hotel really stepped up.  They gave us a fantastic room/suite on the second-to-top floor of the hotel, with a partial view of the Park, a full view of the Time Warner Center (which is one of the great new architectural views in 21st-Century NYC), and a bit of a view beyond that of the Hudson River.  They didn't raise the price on us, and they allowed us to extend our stay when our trip itinerary changed.  Despite the rough start, the Essex House really came through in the end.  We recommend it.