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* Lake Merritt, Piedmont, and 4th street Berkeley *
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Today, we headed out to the East Bay to give it another chance. The last time we went to the East Bay, it was, well, a little boring. Someone had commented on my post about it and recommened some nice places in Oakland to visit. So I took their advice.

We headed over to Lake Merritt to stroll around and take in the sights. Hongyun and I were amazed at how nice a place it was considering that it was in the middle of a city. It was interesting to see the mix of people there. Oakland really is the "most integrated" city. In the Silicon Valley, people tend to be "siloed" by ethnic background. Koreans and Indians seem to be in Santa Clara/Sunnyvale. Chinese seem to congregate in either Fremont or Cupertino. Mountain View has a large Hispanic population. East Palo Alto is predominately African Americans and so forth. In Oakland, is just a big jumble of folks everywhere except maybe Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd where it is predominantly African American.

Anyway, our Lake Merritt stroll turn into a the Lake Merritt speed walking competition since we parked on the side of the lake that didn't allow anyone to park after 1pm. We went all around the lake in about 1 hour and 40 minutes. We sort of rushed through the whole place, but did decide that it was somewhere we'd like to head back to someday.

Next, we headed over to Piedmont for some lunch. Piedmont has a nice small town feel with great shops and eateries. We settled on A.G. Ferrari Foods for lunch. They made some incredible sandwiches that we thoroughly enjoyed. I even bought some of the garlic mayo and day old foccacia bread so we can make sandwiches for our Moneterey Bay Aquarium outing tomorrow. Hint: the garlic mayo is just that: chopped garlic with mayonaise. I'll just make it next time instead of paying an arm and a leg for it.

After lunch, we headed to the Berkeley Art Center which was nestled in a nice neighborhood near UC Berkeley. The park area was under construction, but it was still quite nice. Thr problem was with the gallery itself. The art was down right odd. I'm pretty open about what I consider to be art, but this was definitley out of the realm. Nice atmosphere, but the "art" was too out there...we'll skip it next time.

We headed down to Fourth Street in Berkeley, but stopped off at the Tuk Tuk Thai Market on the way there. These guys have a great little market with tons of Thai groceries and prepared foods. We got some desserts and Thai sausage ("Nam"). The place reminds me of Los Angeles since I grew up going to Thai markets and restaurants there. It's weird to hear people speaking Thai after not hearing it for so long.

Fourth Street is awesome. It's very upscale and has a lot of the same stores (Anthropologie, Crate & Barrel, etc), but there were a few notable shops:
1. Sketch: A husband and wife team crank out awesome ice cream made from fresh, organice ingredients like Jasime flowers, Plums, and Burnt Caramel. Pricey, but amazing. Simply amazing.
2. Mika Paper: Japanese paperie that blew me away with their high quality papers (and equally hgih prices) for their papers. While we were there, this old lady bought one sheet of paper that was $40!! Her husband nearly passed out when he saw the price on the register.
3. East Bay Vivarium: They have one of the largest selections of reptiles in the country and we saw most fof them. A huge boa constrictor, tons of rare animals, turtles of all shapes and sizes, bugs, spiders, and the whole nine yards. Better than a zoo if you're into creepy crawlies (and even if you're not).

Anyway, I'm beat and have a long day of Monterey Bay Aquarium-ing tomorrow.

Photos for both days to come (as well as an install of Gallery 2...they're using drupal now! I'm going to use it for some upcoming sites...woo hoo!)












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