Salt Lake to San Jose - Day 1 and Half of 2

As most of you know, I got back from my 2nd Annual Trip to San Francisco on Monday. And boy, what a trip it was. Noelle and I flew out on Thursday to San Jose. (The reason we started in San Jose was to visit Maddie.) We rented an Altima with a GPS device and headed for La Quinta (which apparently means "Next To Denny's, but in our case it was "Next To Burger King"). No elevator meant we had to haul our heavy-ass luggage up a flight of stairs. Not fun. The room was ok... nothing special... I mean come on, it was La Quinta. We decided to grab something for lunch and then head back to get ready to go to dinner with Maddie and Taylor (they go to school at Santa Clara).

Being that we were in Cali, I suggested In-N-Out Burger since I love it. Noelle decided to name our GPS "Sasha," so we told Sasha we wanted In-N-Out and she guided us there. Actually, we got lost, but then found our way again. Sasha tends to be very condescending if you don't follow her directions. She'll blurt out "Recalculating," and make you feel like a total loser. She's not very nice. She also likes to take you on the longest route possible. Remember the geometry rule? The shortest path between Point A & Point B is a straight line (or as close as you can get while driving). Not in Sasha's mind!

We found In-N-Out and grabbed some food. I loved it, Noelle didn't. She probably won't go back. Not her thing. Backing up... on the way to the airport I realized I forgot my CrackBerry charger, so after grabbing food we headed to the Verizon store in the same parking lot. I ended up with a new hard case (that is the same color as my phone) and a 2nd phone charger. Nice way to start off the shopping spree! Back at the hotel we got ready and then headed out to pick up Maddie and Taylor.

We went down to Santana Row for dinner and to do some shopping. It is officially my new happy place. Kind of like Gateway (here in Salt Lake) but much nicer. We had dinner at Consuelo Mexican Bistro. It was ok. Overpriced and not really my thing, but we had fun. That's where we saw Alex Smith (mentioned in yesterday's post). We decided to do some shopping after dinner and wandered around. We went to the Vera Bradley store and I fell in love. So many cute bags. I got a tiny one for my camera and to use as a wristlet if need be.

After shopping we grabbed some frozen yogurt from PinkBerry. I expected it to taste like crap, but it was actually good. I just have a problem with the texture... but I'll get over it. Apparently the girls live on PinkBerry... I have no idea how they manage to stay so thin... Oh yeah, they're 20 and run or swim every day.... duh!

When we were done we drove the girls back to their dorm, grabbed some stuff at Safeway and headed back to La Quinta. We were an exciting bunch that night... I know. Noelle and I hung around in our jammies, read our magazines and watched Leno. There was no remote so we had to decide on one channel and stick with it. Pain in the ass! I luckily found a sleep timer on the TV itself and we were both out before it went off. On Friday we got ready and headed out. Sasha insisted on taking us in the most roundabout way to store we wanted to go to. Once we found it we decided coffee was a necessity before we began our shopping spree so we asked her for directions to Starbucks. She literally made us drive all the way around the block and then past the main entrance for the store. Whatever! After coffee we headed to The Avenue to find some new threads.

Glasses at H&M. Don't be jealous of the hottness that is my oily face!

I think Noelle and I got to Avenue around 11 and didn't leave until almost 1. We tried on clothes for at least an hour, and on more than one occasion I told her it was the happiest day of my life. I actually found clothes... and they were cute... and they were all affordable. So we both ended up spending a lot of money, but we got a ton of stuff!

We met the girls for lunch at a cute little place right by the airport so we could return our car on time and head to the train station. I'll spare you the details, but I'll just tell you that returning the car to Budget was a less than stellar experience. It worked out in the end... after I spent 25 minutes on the phone waiting for and talking with Customer Service trying to get $75 in charges reversed!

Maddie and Taylor were very sweet to pick us up from the rental place and drive us to the CalTrain Station. We snuck our booze on the train and drank the whole way to San Fran... well, mostly Noelle drank cuz I wasn't feeling really hot. The train ride was fine... I had the shit scared out of me when another train passed us for the first time... apparently Noelle thought that was funny... I didn't. We grabbed a cab when we arrived and got dropped off right in front of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel.

I'm ending here and will give you the 2nd installment tomorrow!