It’s always a good trip when places that you’ve visited in the past end up surprising you with being different. Today, I find myself in Palo Alto after having flown in yesterday, working for a few days from our corporate office. I always forget what an vast, and impressive campus we have, and it’s something you notice when you realize you parked in the completely wrong parking garage even though you had the best intentions (we have something like five or six very large garages). I trekked across campus to hunker down in a conference room, I’m a few hours early and I don’t anticipate anyone joining me for quite a while as I get ready for the day, and write this blog.
I’m here to deliver training, and for a while was even considering moving here to one of our open positions… but there are a few things about California that drive me nuts, and make it very hard to want to consider living here. The first, contrary to the campus I just mentioned, is parking. I met Jen last night (We ended up in the same part of the country somehow!), and we grabbed dinner at a small Japanese restaurant that specializes in ramen noodle dishes. The meal was good and quite a different experience. We selected a pork style, though there are many, and we caught up and enjoyed lychee-flavored sake together as a few hours went by. I had a preserved egg for the first time as part of the soup, and overall the food and drink were exquisite, but the parking was the problem and this is a daily theme in the Palo Alto life.
Every restaurant here has parking problems, and most of them did not consider ingress/egress when they buildings were constructed, so it’s not abnormal to have to back out of an entire lot because you drove to the end and there is no way to turn around or exit. It’s effectively a one-lane parking lot with spaces that just abruptly ends. Luckily this place wasn’t quite that bad (we got there about 30 minutes before they opened), but this is a common complaint of mine. If the place we want to enjoy is hard to get to… I’m less inclined to go, and convincing me will take a lot of work… and in general this either means a lot of Uber here, or I would have to only got a small subset of unpopular places that I know and love primarily for their ample parking. This wouldn’t be much fun!
And while this is essentially a “grinds my gears” post, the next major frustration was traffic. Traffic is the reason I get to work around 6:30, it’s the reason I have to be up early and stay late. Traffic in Palo Alto means my 0.7-mile drive takes an hour, if not more, if in normal commuting hours. It makes for long days just to avoid commute times, but it’s not without its perks as well. I can’t complain too much when my company gives me the trip for free and pays for my meals and hotel room… even the hotel is nicer than I expected!
I stayed at a Courtyard Marriott, and for those that do not know I’m generally a fan due to the consistency of the room and decor, but not so much a fan of the food. The Courtyard food offerings are the same in any hotel you stay in across the nation, it’s part of the branding. What this really means, though, is you get two options for sandwiches, appetizers including wings or a quesadilla, pan-fried dumplings (if you’re lucky), or maybe a burger/steak depending on the mood. This isn’t a lot really, and the lack of variety gets to you after a while. The Courtyard is single-handedly one of the reasons why I avoid hotel restaurants… it’s been that bad for so long that I have no respect for it, until maybe this trip.
I’ve not eaten there yet, but I was informed upon check-in that they’ve thrown out the book and hired their own chef. I’m excited, if a bit timid, at this opportunity! The problem they have now is that there is such good food around California that I’m not sure yet if I want to waste one night in the hotel or not. I’ll have to decide in the next few hours as I only have tonight and tomorrow night free really! This may be a dinner with the boss sort of deal, too… he’s not really that adventurous and maybe this will be the perfect spot for us to have dinner together (my boss’ boss is here with me this week). I hope to be pleasantly surprised!
NOTE: We did end up eating at the hotel restaurant, it was good! They had some amazing fries and in general I enjoyed it! We also sampled their liquor, which of course was the best part, but the food was not bad!
Jen also took me to a noodle shop (ramen place), Dohatsuten, and we enjoyed some good pork broth ramen. In addition, we had lychee sake. I didn’t know lychee sake was a thing and now that I do know I’m not sure I’m ever going to recover. The entire evening was amazing! It was also great to catch up with a good friend, and spend time together! The next few days of the trip were less friendly to timing, but I did end up at Nola with coworkers and had some amazing Cajun food… and jambalaya for the first time ever. I’ll definitely be going back! The food was fantastic!
I finished off the week with a quick trip back to the airport and a delay that had me home by three in the morning… ready to head into work the next day early.
