California, Gap Year

California Part Three: Los Gatos, Monterey Bay and Berkeley

April 2010

Following our trip to San Francisco, the Gap Year Buddy and I decided to take a shorter trip to the nice little town of Los Gatos. It turned out it was easy to get to from San Jose but somehow we still managed to get lost coming back. That was probably because I was driving. Thankfully, we were saved by our sat nav.

Whilst there, we found a nice little coffee shop called Gilley’s, which did a great toasted chicken caesar sandwich, and a sweet shop called Powell’s. One thing America is not short of it good, old-style sweet shops. We also tried to buy some stamps for postcards home but the ones we found were bizarrely expensive, so we shopped around and finally found some we could afford from the post office.

Our next trip was to Monterey Bay and we were keen to return, if only for the shop we found called ‘The Chocolate Factory’. It looked like heaven from the outside but we didn’t have time to go in. Instead, we spent the day lunching at a Mexican restaurant on the waterfront (sadly the food wasn’t amazing but the views were unbeatable) and then went to the world famous Monterey aquarium. It lived up to its reputation with its fantastic collection of marine life, ranging from big jellyfish to otters and seahorses.

Once home again, we sorted campsite bookings for our forthcoming road trip. Well I say we, the Gap Year Buddy did most of the work whilst I looked on. We booked six nights at about £10 a night each, not bad at all.

Our booking madness made us hungry so we drove down to the food court in the local mall found some Chinese food at Panda Express – my new favourite place. It was basically fast food meets Chinese food. We then went to the cinema, for a mere $7.50 (cheaper than home), to see Clash of The Titans (I was in America a while ago)! It wasn’t the best film I’ve ever seen (lacking both significant amounts of clashing and titans) but I do love going to the cinema regardless of the movie.

The next day, we decided to visit Berkeley. What appeared to be an easy drive in a straight line, didn’t turn out to be so easy when the signs disappeared and we ended up paying the toll for the Bay Bridge, heading into downtown San Francisco. After a bit of an adventure, getting lost and attempting to find a petrol station before we ran out of petrol, we found our way back on track.

Once at Berkeley, parking seemed to be impossible but after eventually finding a space, I grabbed some lunch at McDonald’s. We then got some directions to Telegraph Avenue, which apparently was the place to be, and wandered towards it in the sun – it turned out to be another place that reminded me somewhat of Camden.

It was very annoying that we couldn’t spend money or carry stuff around with us. Shopping was getting very tempting, so we hurried away from music shops and ended up at Cafe Gratitude – a vegan restaurant where everything seemed to be served raw. After a ‘I Am Compassionate’ orange juice and a ‘I Am Open’ tea, we headed back to San Jose. Inevitably, we got lost again.

Read about the rest of my trip:

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