Swanning around in sunny San Jose

Friday 18th and Saturday 19th October

Finally I seem to be adjusting to the time zone or maybe it's just the lovely comfortable bed and flannel sheets!  Arriving in San Jose was a bit like a punctuation mark in our holiday - giving us a chance to relax, kick back and recharge out batteries.  Last night we had a great meal at an Italian restaurant, Pasta Pomodoro, to celebrate Sherry's birthday, today we were planning to do......really not very much!

Our only expedition was out to nearby Hellyer Park where we enjoyed a short walk around the lovely lake in the hot Californian sunshine. Sherry and Rich are lending us their bikes during our stay so we sorted them out but otherwise we just relaxed......

In the evening we went to Kazoo, a sushi restaurant with some friends of Sherry and Rich.........it was my first experience of sushi and apart from the difficulty of getting it from plate to mouth with chop sticks, I'm not entirely sure I want to repeat the experience!

Saturday was another relaxing day. We're still getting up fairly early but at least I'm now getting some sleep at night and not falling asleep mid afternoon! After breakfast we headed out on our borrowed bikes to explore the Coyote Creek Trail. This is a cycle path which goes through Hellyer Park and continues south for about 18 miles. Tempting though it was to continue to the end, we had only planned on being out for about an hour so we turned off at the Silver Creek Trail, but as this proved to be a roadside cycle path we abandoned it and found a loop back to Hellyer Park. Continuing in the opposite direction we followed the path through a small golf course and then zig zagged through some side streets back to Erica Court.

It was definitely not far enough or strenuous enough to work off the calories that we have been consuming but with our legs recovering from the marathon we hope to rack up some running, hiking and cycling miles next week.

The rest of the day involved lunch at Panera with Sherry and Rich and then a visit to Whole Foods for grocery shopping, which may sound mundane but is definitely a worthwhile experience. Whilst Sherry and Rich did the serious business of sensible shopping, Martin and I sampled as many olives as we felt we reasonably could without actually buying any and then moved on to the cheese counter..........

Considering that we hadn't actually planned to buy anything we only spent about 40 dollars which is probably a world record for us.

Back at Erica Court I spent a pleasant hour sitting out on the porch reading and enjoying the hot Californian sunshine. It was far too hot for my pale and delicate husband to join me.

We spent a lovely evening sampling some of the Whole Food goodies as Sherry made a fabulous soup of mixed vegetables, purple potatoes and quinoa pasta served with four cheese bread and followed by crab cakes.

My jeans are already feeling tighter, I need to run!