Kenningston Hotel: Stayed at a nice hotel right in the
downtown area of San Fran. Got a parking ticket within the
first 10 minutes of arriving to the hotel, nice little San Fran
welcome. Croissant and coffee breakfast was just fine with me.
Lori's Diner: Visited one of San Francisco's nicest diner's and
ate some pretty good food. While I was there I just happened
to find Michael Tucker from LA Law, like the geek that I am I
got his autograph. It turned out we were seated right next to
him.
Union Square: Visited some malls, Virgin Records mega
store, FAO toy store
Cafe Rigatoni: After passing by Fisherman's Wharf we ate a great Italian
meal here. Kara, our waitress was very helpful in getting us going to Napa
Valley.
Kan's Chinese Restaurant: Took a walk from our hotel over to China
Town and visited Kan's on a recommendation from a friend and found the
food to be very tasty. You definitely have to try the sizzling rice.
Napa Valley: We spent a whole day visiting the wonderful Napa wine
country. Our first stop was at Domaine Carneros, where we sample two very wonderful glasses of
Champagne and treats. We knew we had to continue so we went on to fly through the whole valley and
made it Mt. St. Helena. We decided we had enough driving so we put on our hiking boots and
climbed Helena. Well, after sweating our asses off we decided that was enough and decided to visit the
home of Sutter Home. We were kind of hungry and this was perfect, they have all these wonderful snacks
all around. We sampled about 8 glasses of wine and went back on the road (we were bother fine and
made sure we drove safely).
Candlestick (3Com) Park: Well, after forgetting that Candlestick had been renamed I decided to take a
picture in front of the "Candlestick RV Park" sign with me standing in front of the "RV", I figured that
would be enough of that.
Ghiradelli Square: Had lunch at the Pegasus and walked it over to the Buena Vista Cafe for some Irish
Creme coffee. I had ordered a slice of apple pie but my girlfriend ended up eating it.
John Taylor: My girlfriends long life love and admiration just happened to be strolling
through the Northern part of town by one of the colleges around Barker ave, thus
prompting my immediate u-ee (u-turn) and slamming my brakes to get a picture of my
girlfriend and him. If you haven't figured out who the heck this guy is he was one of the
band members from Duran Duran. Well needless to say my girlfriend, Wendi, was
vaclempt as this experience.
The Crooked Road: We were looking around for a little bit to see if we could find "The Crookedest
Road". Finally, we did and went up and down a few times, cool. Things you have to do as a tourist!
TGI Friday's: One of our traditions is going to Friday's restaurants. We had our normal good meal and
also signed up for the Frequent Friday's Card. We are now only 59,800 points away from winning a
cruise to somewhere.
Planet Hollywood: Well, on our last night there we decided to go have a drink.
Los Angeles: January 9 - 16
OJ Simpson: Despite my overwhelming hatred for the whole ordeal, we passed by both the murder scene
of Nicole Brown and the home of OJ Simpson. I was disgusted by seeing them and wished the whole
scenario would come to a just resolve. One day the truth will come out....
The Martin Lawrence Show: we were lucky enough to sit in on the filming of the show, which aired the
week of February 4th. This was our first sitcom filming and had a ball. The show was funny as usual.
Carolyn in The City: This was our second filming, which took about 3 hours! You can definitely see the
two different styles of directing and script development when compared to the filming of Martin. Overall
they were both excellent!!!
Universal Studios: Well, you have your standard attractions and ride. Or do
you, after visiting Univ. St. in Florida this one lacked a lot. I get to go on Back
Draft and see the development work for Jurassic Park.
Disneyland: The last (actually first) time I had been to Disney World was about
2 or 3 years ago. I was delighted to see, unlike Universal Studios, Disneyland had all of the same rides and
attractions as Florida's Disney World. As usual we let down our guards and became kids again, gotta love
it.
My Visit to Netscape Headquarters: After leaving San Francisco, I felt compelled to swing by Silicon
Valley and make a little visit to the Netscape Headquarters. I was somewhat disappointed, I was hoping
to meet some of the people that I e-mail or see their names come across the mail postings, but no luck. I
did get some very nice glossies of Netscape products. :(
Highway 1: Well we took some very nice pictures of the shoreline as we were driving. We both got very
sick from driving sooo much and we rested when we arrived to Los Angeles.
Los Osos: Between San Fran and LA we rested for the night in what I consider a pretty slow moving
area. We had some difficulty finding some food to eat at 9:30pm, we ended up eating some Chinese food,
we had arrived about 10 minutes to closing, I was very happy that they did not turn us away.
Santa Monica Boulevard & Place: One of the first places we went to was the boulevard. We walked
around all day and did some serious driving up and around the area.
Hard Rock Cafe: After about 6 hours of driving around Hollywood and Beverly Hills, we stopped off at
the Hard Rock to get something to eat. At this point I had developed motion sickness and a SERIOUS
migraine, prompting me to upchuck the 1/4 of dinner I ate. I felt much better after that but still need to
recover for about a day.
50's Time to Eat Cafe: As usual we waited till the late minute to decide were to eat and ended up finding
a really cool little cafe somewhere. It was a retro 50's cafe with some excellent food (we were hungry
anything would have tasted good).
Silicon Graphics Truck: While visiting the NBC Studios I had noticed a very big truck in the parking
and low and behold it was the SGI touring trailer. They had an awesome display of SGI power inside,
unfortunately they were packing up for the day. But, I enjoyed myself before they kicked us out (not
really).
Mann's Chinese Theater: We took the standard walking tour of the whole Hollywood Boulevard strip
and the Walk of Fame and when we concluded that we hopped on over to Mann's and watched 10
Monkeys with Bruce Willis in the main theater. I was completely impressed and excited about the whole
experience and Wendi wasn't moved one bit. Oh, well to each their own...
Cheesecake Factory: Once again, the never ending saga to find something to eat at the latest time
possible lead us to the Rodeo Drive area where we found the only restaurant open and had an Excellent
dinner followed by the best dessert we had the whole trip. This site is a must!!
Venice Beach: A trip to the area would be if we didn't go on over to the beach. We took the day and
walked the whole 30 block strip up and then on the way down ate and continued back to find them filming
a scene from some show. Not luck in being extras. :(
San Diego January 17 - 21
San Diego Zoo: This was wrapping up the trip and added a very nice finale to the events. We
walked throughout the zoo, took the bus tour and glides across the zoo in the sky lift. Over all it was
on ok experience, Wendi definitely had more fun.
Fio's Italian Restaurant: We decided to go out on the town and check out the scene in the
Downtown area of San Diego. Well can we say BAD IDEA, especially for two people who are just
about to run out of all of their money from going out so much. We found this Very nice Italian
restaurant and had an authentic meal. The waiter was excellent and food very filling. Definitely
recommend going there.
Horton Plaza: "Horton Hearing A Hoo", as I kept referring to it, was a very nice collection of tourist
stores providing some common and interesting little sights. We visited them for a full day and then
went to Planet Hollywood at night.
Planet Hollywood: Being the geeky tourists that we were we stopped on over the "Planet" to make
our regular visit. As the rest of the other places this one had nothing distinct to it, the whole experience
is getting a little boring.
This concludes the whole experience to California. The overall experience was excellent and I would
definitely recommend visiting or living there, maybe one day I will move out there. Who knows??
California - January 5 - 22, 1996 
