Saturday, September 4, 2010

We Went Shopping And Then To The Movies.

Today, we started off the day by heading out to some San Jose shopping spots. First up was the Eastridge Mall, where Kate headed back to her favourite San Jose shop, Daiso. Daiso are a store that specialise in selling products produced either in Japan or for the Japanese market.

Daiso, one of Kate's favourite stores in the US

We also headed to Santana Row, one of the more expensive pieces of shopping real estate in San Jose. Amongst other things, Santana Row has a whole bunch of upscale eateries, one of only a couple of Pinkberry stores in the San Jose area, an Oakley store and a Gucci store.

Garden art surrounding the El Jardin Tequila Bar and Restaurant

We had lunch at the El Jardin Tequila Bar and Restaurant, on the island in the centre of the street that is Santana Row and after lunch, Kate and Darrell had icecream from Ben and Jerry's, while I headed straight for the Pinkberry store for a froyo fix.

The Pinkberry store at Santana Row

With lunch (and now dessert) taken care of, we headed to the Oakley store, which is where I managed to find a couple of Oakley's Mad Scientist stickers last year. Unfortunately these appear to now be out of production, and I haven't been able to find any more since then. I ended up buying a couple of other stickers and some long sleeved t-shirts before we moved on once again.

Oakley stores are high on my list of must visit retail locations in the US, along with Converse outlet stores

Next stop was just over the road at the Valley Fair mall and the local Safeway, but all we brought home out of that excursion was a couple of 52 ounce Bubba Keg mugs. The Bubba Keg's are an insulated mug, and the 52 ounce version in particular, stays cold for a very long time, which is handy as 52 ounces roughly equates to 1.5 litres of drink. I've been on a mission to stockpile as many of these mugs as I can to take home with me, and between the Safeway mentioned above and a stop at a Target on the way back to David's place, I added another 6 to the collection today.

Iguana fountain at Santana Row

Tonight is our last full night in San Jose, and we to commemorate this occasion, we went to the local Drive Ins with David and Nicole. This particular drive in theatre features 6 screens and every screen had well over half the viewing bays in front of it taken by paying customers. They also have a rather large restaurant, bar and arcade area that appears to be shared with the local flea market (not the San Jose Flea Market, but another one).



Tomorrow night at around 9pm we should be taking off from San Francisco International Airport, headed for home, well, after a brief stopover in Auckland, New Zealand. The plans for the Cadillac at the moment involve it following us on a boat not long after, though we still have to sort the logistics of getting it from San Jose to Los Angeles and work out where the money's coming from to pay the importers bill.

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