Day 1
A couple weekends ago Frankie and I headed down to San Jose for a showing of Underskatement and figured we'd check out some sights while we were at it. First stop: The Millbrae Pancake House.
Franklin got the the totally insane Hash Benedict and managed to pretty near clean his plate while I polished off a delicious veggie scramble. Then it was onwards to San Jose and a much anticipated visit to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum.
I think I was more excited about the Rosicrucian aspect than the Egyptian, and was a bit disappointed to find that the museum wasn't actually about them, but rather is a collection of artifacts and information gathered and maintained by the AMORC. Still, its a pretty neat place containing all sorts of relics, most of which were collected during expeditions in the 1920's (with a couple found by Howard Carter, the discoverer/ravager of King Tut's tomb) and a handful of actual mummies which I was strangely shocked to see. Somehow I expect those things to end up in the Smithsonian or something, not a strange little museum in San Jose. I have to give it to them, the magnitude of their collection is pretty damn impressive. They've even got a walk-in tomb replica and a rather famous child mummy.
The museum is part of a small complex of buildings (a library and a theatre are two of the others I think) all done in the Egyptian style and surrounded by a lovely little park.
The High School across the street was neat and deco too.
Grabbed the "Rosicrucian History and Mysteries" by Christian Rebisse at the gift shop and took off for a bit of thrifting before the show. Found lots of neat stuff, but just wasn't in a buying mood (weird, I know) so we ventured on towards Anno Domini, Underskatement's home for the night.
Lucky for us Original Joe's is right across the street and we ducked in for some early bird dinner before the screening.
I think spaghetti and tuna melts must be the two things I order most in restaurants. Maybe its because they're hard to do wrong so I hardly ever have to worry about disappointment (an incident at Denny's around age 5 involving spaghetti and the phrase "wallpaper paste" is the only one I can remember).
Sitting at the counter is great because there's no reservation-line wait and you get to watch all the steaks get grilled.
Finished up the show at A.D. and took a recommendation for a cheap, but not frightening motel. It wound up being across the street from what looked like a Mexican biker bar and was adorned with a giant neon sign of its namesake, the flamingo, both of which made it not altogether un-enticing.
Went for a couple games at 4th Street Bowl where Franklin tried to get me drunk and kick my you-know-what, though he wasn't entirely successful, at least not with the latter part. So nice to bowl in a place where there's no on vying for your lane and the games and beverages are reasonable priced. Strangely, the tiny bowling alley bar seemed to be connected by a padded door to a rather hopping nightclub whose music could be heard every time the bartender on our side had to cross over to get more beers.
The coffee shop, however, was closed so we wandered off in search of a late night Denny's breakfast, found it, and never made it to the biker bar. Probably a good thing.
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Day 2
Woke as usual slightly worse than intended, but grabbed some coffee and headed south to the small town of Alviso.
Built along sloughs and prone to flooding, what was once a good sized port town is now more like a small neighborhood. There's a number of old buildings, an abandoned marina overgrown with reeds and a whole system of trails for walking through the marshlands. The Don Edwards Nat'l Wildife Refuge is nearby as well and you could probably spend an entire day walking along the levees.
Our nature plans didn't go over so well when faced with ridiculous wind, so we confined ourselves to walking the immediate shore and searching out the few buildings I remembered hearing about.
If only we'd had the Tub. I think a water approach will be the next mode of exploration.
Gave in to a drink and warm plate of lasagna and decided to save the walk-a-thon for a later date. Turned out to be a great idea as we got to eat in the lounge and witness the set-up for what I can only assume must be a fantastic keyboard-and-showtunes act performed by a platinum blonded septuagenarian. You can't go wrong with a place called Vahl's, no matter how you spell it.
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Pertinent info? Give me a day or two, I'm manning this monster costume and its making me crazy...