CaliforniaBlogs we like

  1. We Wish You a Merry Solstice, and a Non-Denominational New Year: A Muir Woods Solstice

    Blog: Lonely Girl Travels - 24 December 2009

    Nature lover, pagan, hippie, cheapskate—call me what you will, but the Muir Woods Solstice Event ruled. And not just in a Wicker Man kind of way. The free, annual event honoring the longest night of the year is uber North-Bay: wholesome, granola-y, non-denominational family fun, set amid old-growth redwoods and adorned with weedy handmade garlands. Luminaria-lit paths [...]

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  2. Travel Tuesday San Diego Part II

    Blog: A Traveler's Library - 22 December 2009

    Travel Tuesday This post is the promised part two of our Thanksgiving excursion to San Diego. (Part One — San Diego’s Gas Lamp District and Space Ship in Gila Bend are here). After a few days  in the Gas Lamp District of San Diego, we moved to one of the two new hotels in Liberty Station. The [...]This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library

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  3. Three Days in Santa Barbara with Kids

    Blog: Ciao Bambino! - 20 December 2009

    The animals at the zoo inhabit prime beachfront property on the site of the former Child Estate. In addition to the many engaging and interactive exhibits, the Santa Barbara Zoo has just completed full renovations and additions to its play areas. Check the event calendar to see if your trip coincides with one of the many educational events offered on the weekend. After lunch or a picnic at the zoo, continue along the waterfront Cabrillo Boulevard ...

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  4. Petcast & Strip LIVE on Sat!

    Blog: VEGAS HAPPENS HERE - 19 December 2009

    We're doing an hour of Petcasts from 4-5 p.m. followed by an hour of The Strip from 5-6 p.m. PT. Join us at LVRocks.Com to listen live and chill in the chat room with fellow fans.

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  5. Tea Tasting in Chinatown

    Blog: Family Friendly Hotel, Resort, Suite Reviews: Travel Savvy Mom » blog - 18 December 2009

    San Francisco offers many diversions. Many people choose the classics, such as riding a cable car or touring Angel Island. Others prefer to shop and eat their way through the city. Since we're locals, we like our San Francisco adventures slightly more offbeat.

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  6. Travel Tuesday: San Diego

    Blog: A Traveler's Library - 15 December 2009

    A trip to San Diego finds everything old is new again.This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library

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  7. Life is Cheap But Living is Expensive: Hickey, the Dot-Com Death March and Why There’s No Good Bands in San Francisco Anymore

    Blog: Lonely Girl Travels - 8 December 2009

    I love iTunes shuffle. On those long, bumpy bus rides through pebbly Moroccan deserts, when you’ve decided you’re sick of all 8,000 songs on your iPod, you set that baby to shuffle and bam—some blast from the past you’d totally forgotten comes blaring outta little white earpieces. And during my last trip, that blast was Hickey. If [...]

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  8. Choosing Between Disneyland Hotels

    Blog: Ciao Bambino! - 8 December 2009

    Now that I have children, I’m becoming a bit of a Disney freak. Last year my family bought annual passes and visited Disneyland at least once every other month. We live in San Diego, about an hour and a half hour away, so it’s a pretty easy day trip for us. However, it’s more fun and relaxing to sleep in Anaheim so we can spend the whole day at the park. I have stayed in all three Disneyland-owned hotels.

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  9. A New Beer Destination – California’s Central Coast

    Blog: thebeergeek.com - 3 December 2009

    We took the opportunity on Thanksgiving weekend to make another road trip to the southern portion of California’s Central Coast [see SLO Saturday and What is a Beer Geek?]. Quickly, our brethren to the south are building quite a beer community, something that makes us both happy and jealous. Early Saturday morning we were heading [...]

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  10. Hipsters Vs. Homeys: Oakland YouTube Travel Guides

    Blog: Lonely Girl Travels - 1 December 2009

    “Oh hell no,” the text read. “Hipster douches filming Oakland travel video outside the shop.” This was my best friend, writing from her post behind the counter of Tattoo 13. For years, she and the fellas have maintained a comical running commentary on the goings on of the now-trendy Temescal neighborhood, knowing every event, incident and [...]

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  11. Salvation Mountain at Slab City – Leonard Knight’s Message of Love

    Blog: Tales from Technomadia - 23 November 2009

    Some people have a calling, a message they must deliver to the world. Most never act on this. But a rare few are overcome with purpose, and devote their lives to the call. Artist Leonard Knight heard such a call (“to my knowledge, it was on a Wednesday, about ten-thirty in the morning in 1967″), and has dedicated [...]

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  12. 7 Reasons to Love the San Francisco Zoo

    Blog: Family Friendly Hotel, Resort, Suite Reviews: Travel Savvy Mom » blog - 18 November 2009

    The fact that the San Francisco Zoo has had its fair share of negative publicity in recent years makes me sad. This is my hometown zoo. The zoo I grew up on. The zoo against which all other zoos were measured.

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  13. Lady of Oysters and Beer

    Blog: A Lady in London - 7 November 2009

    Last weekend I went on two great day trips. One trip focused on oysters, the other on beer. I have a pretty great life these days :).

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  14. Lady and the Chocolate Factory

    Blog: A Lady in London - 7 November 2009

    Today I went to Berkeley to tour the Scharffen Berger Chocolate Factory. I had passed by the factory a few times before, and my combined love of chocolate and interest in how it's made prompted the visit.

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  15. Lady to Breakers

    Blog: A Lady in London - 7 November 2009

    This week's adventure took me home to California, and I couldn't have picked a better time to visit. The weather was hitting record highs in SF just as the London heat wave succumbed to the London rain. As if that weren't reason enough to be excited, there were two special events in the city over the weekend: Oyster Fest and Bay to Breakers. The latter is my boyfriend's favorite holiday ("it's like Christmas and New Year's combined," he says), so I knew I was in for a good time.

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  16. Lady of the Land

    Blog: A Lady in London - 7 November 2009

    Every year on my birthday my aunt and uncle send me a card. This year they sent one with a black and white photograph of rolling hills dotted with giant oak trees. Without having to read the description, I knew that the picture was of California. It made me homesick.Being back in California this week made me want to see some of that beautiful land outside of San Francisco. Yesterday my boyfriend and I drove across the Golden Gate bridge and headed up to wine country to take in the scenery and taste some of our state's famous Pinot Noirs.

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  17. Lady in Silcon Valley

    Blog: A Lady in London - 7 November 2009

    On Monday I started a new job in London. On Tuesday I hopped on a plane to San Francisco for three weeks of job training at company headquarters. Ironically, the company I'm working for is headquartered in Silicon Valley about three blocks away from my high school. My life has a funny way of bringing me back to California.So far I have spent the entire week in the Valley, which is something I haven't done since college. It's strange to be back in the area where I grew up. After living in London for a year and a half, I'm seeing things from a completely new perspective.

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  18. Lady in Silicon Valley

    Blog: A Lady in London - 7 November 2009

    I grew up in Silicon Valley. Intel, Cisco, and Oracle were household names in my town not just because everyone used their products, but because everyone's parents were employed by them. As a kid I didn't realize how unique my home was; I thought everyone's parents—except for mine, of course—became paper millionaires overnight and every household had at least three computers by 1986. And while I was stuck driving a 1992 Dodge Caravan to school every morning, most of my classmates were embarrassed that their BMWs were only 3 series. It was, as we came to call it, a bubble.

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  19. iPhone: The Backpacker's Best Friend?

    Blog: Desperately Seeking Root Beer - 5 November 2009

    How much technology do you need with you when you go on a backpacking trip in the wilderness? Or, perhaps more to the point, how much do you actually want with you?My general rule with packing for a backpacking trip is to bring as little as possible, and only as much as you're willing to carry. When a friend brought his iPhone on a recent backpacking trip, I scoffed at the idea. Why on earth would you want to bring that confounded device into the wilderness? There won't be any signal, and you certainly can't pound in a tent stake with it.

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  20. Dos Dias de los Muertos: Oakland Vs. SF Celebrations

    Blog: Lonely Girl Travels - 3 November 2009

    It’s not Mexican Halloween. Or Northern Californian Halloween. It’s Dia de los Muertos, and it’s everyone’s holiday now. You can’t escape Dia de los Muertos in the Bay Area. That’s a good thing. It’s a pretty bad-ass holiday, based in the Aztec belief of death not as a definitive end, but merely a continuation in a [...]

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  21. Travelogue: Burning Man to Hemet, CA

    Blog: Tales from Technomadia - 24 October 2009

    Time Period: September 6 – October 24 Miles Driven: 1179 (not including non-RV trips) Post Burning Man we only had one specific goal – to make it to Hemet, CA for much needed down time. We had met some folks in the area during our travels earlier in the year that we only had the opportunity to visit [...]

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  22. The Business End

    Blog: Aerohaveno: A Travel Blog - 9 October 2009

    I’ve only been upgraded to international Business Class on two occasions.

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  23. In Bigfoot's Living Room

    Blog: Desperately Seeking Root Beer - 1 October 2009

    She frowned and almost spat when she spoke; clearly I had inadvertently wandered into sensitive territory, and she was probably tired of the question. How could I not ask? All available space on the restaurant walls was covered in cast iron pans with people's names neatly painted in red and white; there was a sign over a doorway that declared this to be the world's largest privately owned collection of cast iron cookware. One pan proudly held the name of Doug McConnell, host of TV's Bay Area Backroads.

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  24. Tweeting in the USA

    Blog: Aerohaveno: A Travel Blog - 1 October 2009

    Glancing over the output of my Twitter feed for the past few weeks, I realised that, if I reversed the order of tweets, I’d have a neat microblog of my entire S

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  25. SeaWorld, San Diego: 5 Family Favorites

    Blog: Family Friendly Hotel, Resort, Suite Reviews: Travel Savvy Mom » blog - 23 September 2009

    On a recent trip to San Diego, my extended family and I visited SeaWorld San Diego as their guests. We spent over nine hours tromping around the park, stopping only when the sun went down and we became chilled in our whale-water soaked clothing.

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