Grand Canyon

It was a beautiful day to drive into Grand Canyon. Words can't describe the beauty of nature. I especially love seeing the golden weeds being blown by the strong wind. 

The ever changing colors of the Grand Canyon. Depending on the time and the location of the day.

Decadence

Do you love chocolate? Then you MUST visit the world's largest chocolate fountain, here in the Bellagio Hotel. Everything in Jean Philippe is mouth watering. Especially the breakfast pastries... yummy but we decided to go for the crepes. We had the  berry mix and exotic fruit crepe Souffle. Yummss...nothing beats sweet delicious crepe and aromatic coffee in the morning! 

For lunch, YC treated us to Julian Serrano in Aria. I love tapas, when I saw the menu, I couldn't really decide what to order, in the end, we decided on the non-alcoholic sangria, ahi raspberry skewer, octopus on potatoes, fried calamari, cheese plater and coca vegetarian. Coca? It's spanish pizza.

You would think such small portions would not be sufficient but surprisingly, we were very very full at the end of the meal. Makes me miss Spain for all the tapas. Nonetheless, thanks YC for the lovely lunch! :)

Vegas Vegas!

I love glitz, glamour and glass. Haha... I love everything that is shinny, colorful and pretty.

This is Vegas during the day.

 

 

 

 

And this is Vegas during the night, I think it's more mesmerizing at night with the colors and lights!











 

So much to see yet so little time, o Vegas I must return! :)

Mon Ami Gabi

What could be more fashionable than sitting at the patio basking in the warm beautiful sun in a cold cold winter day? Being new in town, we Yelped for a good place for lunch. This place had over thousands of review for having good food in a good location with a good view. Even with reservations, we still have to wait a tad over 10 minutes for a table but it was worth it. The place was beautiful, we were having lunch in Paris, the hotel in Las Vegas, right on the strip. *chuckle*. Look we even had the Eiffel Tower view!

 

My lunch at Mon Ami Gabi was yummy, I had the scallop gratinees and endives salad. I was a little shocked when I saw that I was only served 3 scallops but it was so rich you wouldn't want more than 3 scallops! It was cooked with caramelized fennel, onion marmalade and mussel cream. The salad came with bosc pear, blue cheese, watercress and celery. It was very satisfying without feeling guilty at all! The rest of the party had the seafood crepe, spinach quiche, and shrimp and crab salad sandwich topped with avocado! Oh I forgot to mention, they serve warm fresh baguette with homemade smooooooth butter! To die for! :)

Happy Birthday Rrotrrot!

There's nothing I can get for a friend who's constantly giving and not interested in receiving. So the least that I can do is make her a birthday dinner and buy her a cake! Both of us have been craving for Nasi Lemak for a very long time so I decided to make Nasi Lemak for her birthday and made sambal from scratch (recipe courtesy of Omar Food Channel). Oh boy the sambal was so spicy that I couldn't take more than a bite but thank goodness Rrotrrot loves it. So looks like the sambal is a winner and I shall make more in the future to share it with my friends who misses sambal! :)

Ps: Birthday girl also cooked 2 dishes if not the rice plate wouldn't be complete!

Snowy Tahoe

Summer was late, so did fall and suddenly from summer hot days, it became winter overnight. It was forecasted to be raining over the weekend, which means it might snow in Tahoe. So we packed up our winter gear and drove to Tahoe for a day trip. The day started kinda gloomily but when we stopped for lunch, the day became so beautiful, it was so breathtaking.

 

If only I could write as well as I take photos. I'm so lucky to be able to take photos of my favorite subject matters: blue skies, puffy white clouds, horizon, sea and the pier.

Is this the road to Paradise, it sure looks like we're in Paradise.

One of these days, I'm going to stay at these waterfront cabins and enjoy the scenery all day long...

We were lucky that the sun came out once again when we arrived at Emerald Bay, we were just lamenting at how dull the water looked like on the way towards Emerald Bay.

Emerald Bay

Then the day turned gloomy again, and it snowed briefly. I always think that colored gloomy snowy days are gloomy but they look beautiful in black and white, don't you think so?

Then I met this little fler who was just absolutely elated to be able to run on fresh snow of the season!



What does this remind you off? A thriller movie? Some of the cabins were covered in amazing looking icicles but I didn't stop to take photos of them and only got these.

 Tahoe, I'm definitely coming back for more! 

Labor Day Weekend

Where did summer go? I don't know... time flies and it's already the end of summer. I haven't really done much during this summer and I felt like I should be spending more time outdoors, closer to mother nature than the four walls of my home, so my friends helped me organized these wonderful trips over the long Labor Day weekend. 

Day 1: Beach hopping.

We thought Santa Cruz would be the warmest when the weather was cold but a few days before the temperature suddenly dropped and it became cloudy and foggy. When we reached the beach, it was cold and nippy.

Ooh look! What's going on here? There's a Sand Sculpting event.  Everyone was just going around the beach checking out the sand sculptures. They were really cool and awesome!

Look at the waves! So much for a sunny day by the beach. Despite the strong waves, the brave boy marched on unflinching.

After Capitola we went to Half Moon Bay. Isn't this view beautiful? 

From Half Moon Bay we drove up to Pigeon Point lighthouse.

And finally, Moss Beach, the coldest of them all. We didn't even stay because it was so cold and windy.

Day 3: Redwood Regional Park

Ooh hiking? Where should we go? Easy trail? Yes, let's go! So we chose this easy 4 miles hike at Redwood Regional Park. The trail wasn't bad and not busy. Although there were signs saying expecting to see colonies of ladybugs and trout spawning but we didn't. Probably because it's not the right season.


 

Aren't the redwood trees amazingly tall?



After the redwood forrest, we came out to this clearing where we could see Lake Chabot ahead. The weather turned nice and it was truly a beautiful day to hike!

What happened to Day 2?

We decided to take it easy and stayed home. All in all, it was a very beautiful weekend and I really had a great weekend with my beloved friends! :)

Out the what?

There's the Slanted Door and now Out The Door. How peculiar I find these names. Just like its sister restaurant, OTD is a Vietnamese fusion restaurant, with French influences. After taking a walk at the Golden Gate Park in the cold cold but beautiful day, we went for our lunch at OTD. I really liked the interior of this restaurant. Reminded me of my little dream of opening my own restaurant one day. It's a long restaurant, there are tables along the pine wood wall on the right and on the left it's the open kitchen with bar stools along the counters. The floor consists of granite tiles and they have marble/granite counter tops as tables. If you want, you can sit along the counter and watch them prepare the food while you eat, that is if you want to see how they handle your food. If not, I'm happy to be just sitting by the wall and enjoy my meal away from the kitchen. It is a really simple chic restaurant.

How many types of eggs have you tried? Sunny side up, scramble, over easy...but have you tried slow cooked egg? *chuckle* well it's just like poached eggs. We started the meal with some beignets and Vietnamese coffee, for our main, we ordered the slow cooked eggs, soft scrambled eggs and french toast. Ah, you'd say, why do we bother to eat out such simple meals?

Here's the catch:

Slow cooked eggs come with niman ranch brisket, caramelized onions and crispy potatoes. Soft scrambled eggs come with dungeness crab, crispy creamer potatoes, gribiche, and chives. Mixed berry french toasts come with strawberries, blueberries, mint, lemon creme fraiche, and maple syrup.

Now wouldn't you be enticed to check this place out? :)

Misty Golden Gate Bridge

Every time the weather forecast said it will be a beautiful day out in the city, we always ended up with a fogged up bridge! Nonetheless, it was a beautiful day out.

Cha Ya Vegetarian Japanese

It was one of those it's too beautiful to stay indoors and let's go spend it outdoors day. So I decided to spent the afternoon in the Mission district, exploring the fun boutiques and quaint little shops. I walked passed this restaurant and was really intrigued by it, Cha Ya vegetarian Japanese? How wonderful, now vegetarian would not be deprived of Japanese food! After spending the afternoon in the strong wind, I'm dying for some hot soup so we ordered the sukiyaki, Cha Ya roll and stuffed eggplant. The flavor is really good but most of it are rather sweet and a lot of the items are deep fried. Nonetheless it's really good and I would love to go again to try other stuff, there are way too many options to choose from. Also, it's really packed, so if you plan to go, go earlier and bring cash (because it's cash only).

Twin Peaks

The view of SF from Twin Peaks. The wind nearly blew the car door away but hey, it was worth it.

The Painted Ladies

Ever watched Full House? Well this is where they shot one of the opening scenes. Finally after 2 years, I visited The Painted Ladies. Apparently there are many victorian houses refered as Painted Ladies in SF but this is the one made famous by Full House! Now, I can say I've been to the painted ladies! The weather was so clear I could even see the city's skyline!

Happy Birthday ML!

The weather finally turned better and what could be better than to sit outside, have brunch and to celebrate a friend's birthday? So for her birthday brunch, the birthday girl requested The Front Porch.

While waiting for the guests to arrive, we ordered some beignets to start with. What are beignets? They're kinda like donuts sprinkled with confectionary sugar, but I believe that the beignets we had had banana in it. My, it was really good, it wasn't too oily and not too sweet. I can pop 2 or 3 of these anytime with coffee! Only that I was saving space for the main course!

Our party ordered the chicken waffle, fried oysters po'boys, spicy shrimp and grits, and the ever mysterious vegan lunch. Frankly, I'm not a big fan of deep fried chicken, but when you eat creole food, you MUST try their deep fried chicken, it's their specialty. For a person who doesn't like fried chicken, I really liked it. I don't know what they marinate the chicken in but it's very flavorful, it'll be a sin to eat it with ketchup! Even the waffle tastes different. Either they served us red potato waffle if not they must've used some of the chicken marinate in the waffles *haha*.

Verdict? Thums up!! I would definitely bring you here if you want to! :)

Sam's Chowder House

Because it was a day to celebrate, we wanted it to be special. A month before the date we made reservations at Sam's Chowder House for a party of 12. What's so special about this place? The best place to view sunset while enjoying fresh and succulent seafood with your friends and family.

For starters, we had the fried artichoke and calamari, then for mains, we had the lobster sandwich (voted top five best sandwich in America), crab cake, grilled halibut and jumbo prawns stuffed with Dungeness crab and many others which was devoured before the camera was ready. Haha....

Verdict? I was a little disappointed. It was a foggy day so there was no sunset, there's nothing I can do about the weather but the service was bad. A party of 12 means 20% gratuity but do they deserve it? No. We never knew the reason why but I wouldn't go back again. Nonetheless, here's a picture to commemorate the great company and the people who made the day possible! *cheers!*

May 14, 2011

Graduation. A day to remember :)