I enjoyed the previous format of blog posts but I think this will be a slight departure from them. I’d like to start off by saying: I had an absolute blast! Let’s get into the play-by-play…
The Night Of
The night before leaving I decided to stay up instead of sleeping. I figured the plane ride would be a solid 6 hours so I could get a full night’s rest on the plane and it’d be like “time traveling”. I don’t think I’ve ever had such wishful thinking not pan out in my entire life. So I stay up all night, nervous that I forgot stuff, making sure everything was packed and getting ready to leave. I remembered everything for once, which was good. I get to Logan Express (the bus to the airport) and park my car, get on the bus and get to the airport. Great! Everything is going smoothly.
Turns out they gave me a seat with extra legroom! What a bonus! The problem is that I had to stow my backpack in the luggage compartment because there was no seat in front of me ;_; and the problem with that is that all my books, earplugs, sleep mask, tablet, snacks, etc. were in there. So I am sitting next to this couple and I had to bother them a bunch to get my backpack. I tried to sleep, and totally couldn’t. I wish I could sleep on planes. I really don’t understand why I can’t ๐
So at this point I’ve been up since 11 AM on Thursday and it’s Friday night at 10 AM. I land, have to wait until everyone else gets off for me to get my bag because I had to stow it like 9 rows behind me, and then I finally alight from the plane. After a confusing 10 minutes of trying to find the car rental place, I get there and they ask me, “Would you like to upgrade to a Mustang for free?” And I’m like “HELL YEAH I WOULD!” They chuckled.
So the rental is secured and I’m figuring out how to drive this thing. It was awesome. I think I want a Mustang now lol. They’re only like 31,000 USD which isn’t bad.
My friend’s flight landed literally 2 minutes after mine so I roll up in the Mustang and pick him up at his terminal. Apparently he ALSO rents a Mustang whenever he goes to California, haha. So we finally get to the hotel at like 1 PM and check in, drop off our stuff and head to the venue to meet our friends.
The venue was pretty cool. It was the Santa Clara Convention Center, and it had free parking, which was really nice. I don’t really remember much of Day 1 because I was in like a sleepless fog the entire time lol. Maybe someone can fill me in on the details. I probably shouldn’t have been driving. OH YEAH! So there was trade night, which sucked because I didn’t bring any trades, but I met up with a bunch of my friends and whatnot and then convinced a few of them to go to the arcade at like 11 PM lol. So I’ve been up for like 36 hours at this point. We get to Round 1 and play some games, then headed back to the hotel and got some (much needed) rest.
Day 2 – Tourney Day!
We wake up somewhat early to get a spot in line for the merch. It was crazy, the line was SUPER long. I ended up buying a couple playmats that were popular. I missed out on the artist ones but I really don’t care. I got my Xiao Ciao deck box, which is really what I was after. The tournament starts somewhat late because of the merch line (lesson learned I hope!), so we finally get paired up, find our seats and sit down. I can’t remember if there was a round 1 re-pair. I think they dodged it by just giving latecomers a round 1 loss.
The day is kind of a blur due to lack of sleep. Lunch is called after round 4 and I get some friends together and we hit up Jack in the Box. Never been there before! The butter bun cheeseburger or whatever it’s called is absolute fire. We drive back and eat at the venue. Round 5 I think I played vs Fire Luxem Zander and I make an absolutely backbreaking gameplay error and lose the round then tilt into oblivion over it because I’m stupid and I get really really mad at myself when it’s me who messed up and caused myself to lose what should have been a free win. Actually mad just thinking about it lol.
I end up killing a Fire Zander later, then for my last round, I’m 6-2 and I get called to report to the stage. Neither my opponent nor I can intentionally draw into day 2 so we HAVE to play it out. I get stomped on camera and my opponent’s absolutely unbeatable high roll crushes me into the dust. The worst part is that my match is literally the only round I can’t find on YouTube and I think it’s because my opponent’s card sleeves were so controversial lol. So I ended the tournament 6-3, which isn’t bad.
Donny’s Nights (Saturday/Sunday)
So I get a crew together to go to karaoke, and I’m carting everyone around so they don’t have to pay for Ubers and whatnot. I tried to convince my Lineage Break teammates to participate but they’re cowards lol. Anyway, I roll up to the karaoke place and we had like 24 twisted teas between us. It was an absolute blast. Karaoke is always fun! They thankfully had YouTube based karaoke so we were able to sing whatever we wanted. Some absolute bangers. Dude, “Every Time We Touch” by Cascada is actually a sick karaoke song to sing with a huge group haha. It was such a a good time.
Monday
I’m like skipping an entire day and a bunch of spoilers but I want to get to the meat and potatoes of this post, which is really focused on the vacation itself. First things first, one of my friends is out of work right now so he asks if he can stick around in Santa Clara for like 3 days and I’m like, “of course!” So now I’m looking for stuff to do that’s cool in the area. We went to the Intel Museum, which was big on my list, but it ended up being a bit of a disappointment and kind of small. My friend isn’t huge into computers so I felt like I was kind of punishing him by being there so left earlier than I’d have liked to but it was still interesting and I was fine with it. Then we had some great food at this place called Pacific Catch. I wish I remembered the name of the fish I ate, it was so good.
We got back in the car and looked for cool stuff to do in the area. I drove over to the Winchester Mansion and the lady at the register absolutely fucked me when I asked “When is the next tour” and they told me in like 30 mins, but then didn’t ask me if I wanted to buy tickets so when I wanted to go on the tour they were like, “you needed to buy tickets inside” and then I went back inside and they were like, “last tour already left”. So I was giga-fucking pissed about it and said some bad stuff about the experience pretty loudly. This would come to bite me later because I drew only cursed hands in face up Pai-Gow at the casino that night lol. By the way, Pai-Gow is a wonderful game! I recommend learning it. Face Up Pai-Gow specifically.
Then we made plans to drive down Route 1 the following day. I wanted to see how fast I could get the Mustang up to on that road and ooooooh boy lol.
Tuesday
We 285 then took 84 towards Half Moon Bay and the drive was so scenic through the mountains on a single lane road. Then we took Route 1 south along the coast and stopped for lunch at this taqueria like 30 minutes north of Santa Cruz. The food was great, but the views were EXCELLENT. Oh and we randomly ran into this dude that I know from Grand Archive on the side of the road. It was actually so awesome and serendipitous! Anyway, we got to the Mystery Spot, which was crazy. It was $10 to go on the tour and it was like, this crazy house that is like 30 degrees inclined. It’s a huge optical illusion and a really cool experience. The pictures don’t really do it justice for the experience itself.
After that, I wanted to hike around in the Redwoods so we drove to a park nearby and spent like 40 minutes hiking in and out of the woods. It would have been a nice day trip, but we were running out of sunlight at that point. The sun is really going down by the time I gas up for the 45 minute drive back to Santa Clara. After it gets dark out, we drove back on Route 17 and apparently it’s one of the most dangerous highways in America and I can see why lol. It’s all these switchbacks heading through the mountains and it’s like 50 mph speed limit and it’s kind of a tight road with 2 lanes on each side. It was some of the most fun I’ve ever had driving in my life because it was actually kind of scary and felt like, actually dangerous, but I trust myself.
After we got back into town we hit up this really nice Peruvian restaurant and oh my God the food was incredible. I ordered the octopus and they gave me 2 full tentacles! I was like a kid in a candy shop. My friend commented on how happy I looked when I was eating it. After that we were looking for something to do, went to a bookstore, hung out a bit, then decided to hit up this Korean Karaoke bar that looked lively on Google Maps. We get there and it’s like, dead AF. My friend is like, “let’s bounce” and I was like, “Let’s get one drink, they have maekgolli and I’ve always wanted to try it. So I order it and the older Korean bartender is like “you like maekgolli?!?” And I was like, “I’ve never tried it but I follow this guy on YouTube who loves it and travels all over Seoul”. So we get to chatting, and they give us some hot peanuts and whatnot. We get another bottle, split it and just had a grand old time. Didn’t do Karaoke unfortunately, but chatted with them a bunch. By the end of the night we decided we were going back there tomorrow.
Oh apparently CVS sells liquor in California, who knew. We grab a bottle of Dickel’s and head back to the hotel room, chill and chat for a while over a few drinks before bed.
Wednesday
I need to do laundry, so I find a Laundromat in the area because the laundry machines at the motel are broken. By the way, the hotel I moved from was super nice — The Domain Hotel in Santa Clara, CA — and went to the Travel Inn in Sunnyvale, which was a motel around the same price point (a little cheaper) but the amenities were way worse. The Domain had a pool and a hot tub. The Travel Inn had nice staff but looked super dated. The Laundromat that we went to was pretty cursed. We parked and looked for this little cafe nearby and I swear to God they used raw sewage to brew their coffee. The whole place smelled like crap and I was extremely disgusted. We went to this convenience store and my friend told me I absolutely had to try this Cactus Juice drink. It was pretty good, ngl, but it was like 280 calories of pure sugar lol.
Anyway, this guy with a bunch of wiper blades sticking out of his backpack starts looking around at cars in the area while we’re doing laundry so I decide that we have to do laundry in shifts so one of us can defend the car in the meantime while the other is folding their clothes lol. That guy was so suspicious dude it was wild, but I’m also parked in the hood with a red mustang so… I probably also look equally suspicious.
We spend some time at the casino playing Pai-Gow again, it was a pretty good time. Hung around, didn’t do anything too crazy that I recall. I probably have the whole timeline screwed up to be honest. But we did end up back at that Korean Karaoke Bar that night and it was really packed! We went in, had some maekgolli, hung out for a while and did some songs. Now, the owner plays keyboard and charges by the song, but he plays it live while you sing. It was awesome. There’s a bunch of old Korean dudes there too and they bought us some coconut shrimp and fries because we were having fun and so we talked to them for a while and they were in the army and stuff. It was actually super wholesome and fun. Great time!
Thursday
After waking up the next day, my friend has to leave, so we get in the car, get some coffee, kinda just figure we’ll head to the casino near the airport and play some cards. Had a good time. Lost all my money lol. Ended up like… 300 in the hole over 3 days? Not bad all said and done. My friend realized he forgot his favorite sweatshirt in the hotel after I drop him off at the airport so I call them, run back to the hotel and grab it then drop it off at the airport for him. His flight was delayed so I hung out with him for a while. I didn’t really mind spending the time, I had to drive to San Francisco later that night anyway.
So he gets on his flight, I’m like, I’ll get a bite to eat then I’ll head up to San Francisco. Well… It’s around 4 PM at this point. I just stop at a Jack in the Box and get something to tide me over before I drive north. It’s raining out.
I start to drive north and I see there’s a bunch of traffic. It’s supposed to be a 45 minute drive and it ended up taking around 3 hours. The traffic was so bad that it routed me into the airport so I could immediately turn around and exit the airport and skip like an extra 35 minutes of traffic. It’s unreal. I thought Boston traffic was bad, but California traffic is on a whole other level. What an absolutely wild way to live.
I get to my cousin’s and we eat some lasagna, they put the baby to bed and we kinda just hang out for the night. The lasagna was good and it was nice seeing them again. ๐
San Francisco
I wake up early and take the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to Market Street, walk down to the pier and take the tram and it’s actually kind of sick. The old timey trams have different “themes” and one of the ones I was on was a “Philadelphia tram” and it had different windows and everything from the other tram I was on. Very cool stuff. I think things like that go unappreciated once the novelty wears off, but for a tourist it’s super cool.
Alcatraz
I am splitting this off in its own section because Alcatraz is A) so cool and B) I was off on my own doing it. So I get to the pier, and I’m starving, it’s like 11 AM and I ate breakfast at like, 8 AM. There’s a bunch of hot dog vendors there so I get a hot dog and it’s like $10 USD, which is a rip off considering the hot dog I got in Toronto was both better and cheaper at $6 CAD. Inflation, am I right? I buy my ticket to the ferry and hop on. I talk to a guy named Olivier, he’s from Connecticut and does Android development. Nice guy! I really enjoy traveling on my own because I generally tend to talk to strangers and strike up conversation. I try to do that with friends too and started getting my other friends who aren’t as outgoing on board with it. I’m not an outgoing person by any means, but like… Why not talk to strangers? Maybe you’ll meet someone cool.
The ferry heads over to the island and we all alight, greeted by park rangers and other staff they inform us they’re doing a walking tour with a park ranger and a self-guided audio tour, but you’re not obligated to do either. I tell Olivier I’m doing the walking tour and he joins me. We get a ton of good history about Alcatraz, which I won’t spoil here because I think it’s worth the trip. The tour guide thanked me afterwards for asking good questions, being engaged and nodding while listening. She was really nice, we chatted for a bit and then I went to do the self-directed audio tour inside the facility. The inside of Alcatraz is crazy. When you look at the conditions that were in there, it’s amazing some of these things people lived with back then.
After Alcatraz, I hop back on the ferry, go back to the mainland. I asked my friends for some recommendations of stuff to see and places to eat, so I hit up my friend Mike’s Vietnamese food recommendation. Very very good stuff! The name of the place was Tรบ Lan and it was delicious, cheap and very filling.
Headed back to my cousin’s house after that. Got back around 3 PM or so. We drove in, grabbed dinner, hung out and chatted a while, but after that I’m pretty sure we just had a chill night in. I ended up watching 2 episodes of “The Penguin” with her husband and then went to bed at like 11 PM.
Day 3
We went to Golden Gate Park! I got to see the Golden Gate Bridge and it was really cool for like the 20 minutes before I cracked my head open on some bricks lol. I was going under this tunnel and trying to dodge this puddle that settled at the bottom of it, and jumped over it but there was this lip of bricks on the other side where I cracked my head on it mid jump. My cousin’s husband asked me “Are you ok?” And I held out my hand full of blood and was like, “No lol”. I was actually fine, it hurt a bit, but head wounds bleed a ton anyway. I am glad I always keep a hand towel on my person at all times. This was actually a really practical use of it. So I cleaned up my head, we took some pictures, but it was insanely windy out with winds up to like 50 mph. Apparently a tornado touched down like 1.5 hours south of SF. It was windy and rainy and awful lol.
Thankfully we were in the car Everytime it started raining and when we got out it would stop. We went to this place that makes a really good Irish coffee, but there was this whole thing called “Santa Con” going on where a bunch of people dress up like Santa and get extra sloppy so the bar was standing room only and it was no place for them to have their 1 year old, so we peaced out and hit up Japantown.
Japantown was like, a small block and they have a 5 point pagoda but it was unfortunately under construction so we weren’t able to get near it. The little mall they have had some really nice shops. I went into a bookstore and bought a Japanese light novel (ๅใฎๅใฏใ). I’m gonna read it once I get through Genki 2 later this upcoming year. After Japantown we went to this upscale Italian restaurant called “Original Joe’s” and it was pretty awesome. The food was incredible. After that, we went home IIRC.
Day 4
We woke up kind of early but I went to the arcade for a bit in the morning while they were getting ready and dealing with work stuff. I played Chrono Circle, which was sick, and came back around 11:30 AM. After that, we went to Twin Peaks and got some great views of the city! Then we drove to the Sutro Baths which is in ruins now, but it was definitely a cool place to be. I bet when it was in its prime it was probably so awesome.
We ended up going to Amoeba Music, which is near Haight-Ashbury. That whole section of the city is super “Boho” (Bohemian) so it’s kinda cool. The record store was dope, and they had a lot of good stuff. I saw a Saves the Day “Through Being Cool” pressing going for $75. I’m surprised there’s still a market for it. I loved that album. After that we went to Cha-Cha-Cha for some Caribbean food. Grant and I split a ceviche and Alyssa and Owen had some plantains and salad and chicken. Really great food. I’d never had Caribbean before!
Post-dinner we walked around, found a nice bar eventually after they kept rejecting our party because “no babies allowed” it’s like… Literally why, the baby isn’t drinking… But we went to an Irish Pub and it was actually really nice because our waiter was Irish haha. It was a nice spot, had a good time and then peaced back to the house. We chatted later in the night and my cousin gave me some advice about my dating profile, and we chatted about life and whatnot. It was really nice catching up with her all weekend. I forgot how well we get along because I haven’t seen her in forever.
Day 5 (Monday – Last day!)
I wake up early and my cousin’s mother is there to visit her grandchild. It’s been a while since I’d seen her so it was great catching up. I went to the arcade for a bit before I came back, got my luggage and then went to the airport. The airport was fine, nothing out of the ordinary except I got the “Hawker bowl” at a Singaporean joint in the airport and it was mediocre, nothing like the real thing and very Americanized. Sad. I’m glad I had my prawn crackers (which I got into over in SG) because I started typing this whole thing up before getting on the plane. It’s been like 2 weeks since I got back lol but I’ve been super busy with family every day since landing back in Boston.
Hindsight, Highlights and Hardships
In hindsight, I had a really really great time. I became closer friends with the guy who I bunked with during the tourney and the other guy who stuck around afterwards. I had a great time with both of them and am looking forward to seeing them again. I’m bunking with one of them in Utrecht in January, which I’m looking forward to as well.
Highlights were Alcatraz, Golden Gate Bridge, Sutro Baths, Route 1, seeing our mutual friend randomly, the food, the Korean Karaoke Bar… Man the whole trip just felt kinda magical, whimsical and fun.
Hardships were few and far between. I think the things I didn’t like were that it felt like a downgrade when I changed hotels. I should have just stayed in the other one, but I couldn’t have known. The tournament itself was great so I have zero complaints about it. I appreciated that they announced people should double check their results. I wouldn’t want anyone to get “Toronto’d” (See my other blogpost for context lol). Another hardship was renting the car was more expensive than I thought. I also got a parking ticket for $55 because the BART parking in Daly City is unintentionally confusing and instructions are unclear. Usually you always pay on the way out in most places… Other than that, I can’t complain! I had a great time.
I just wanted to say, thank you for reading this. It’s kind of a long post but I’m cramming many many days into a single post. I glazed over a lot of the details because even typing this has taken a while. I’m looking forward to Utrecht in a couple weeks!
