Curbside Creamery, Alley 49

Conveniently located across from Cro Cafe was an ice cream shop...

complete with "artisanal flavors" and old timey font...

Cro Cafe, Alley 49

Across the street and literally in an alley was our next stop...

I wasn't aware of how hipster this place really was until we set foot there...

My MO was just, "find another coffee spot" nearby in google maps and this place popped up...

Bowl'd BBQ - Oakland

(Back to the Spring Break road trip posts)

Fresh from our foray into the forest at Redwood Regional Park...

we headed into the Temescal neighborhood in Oakland for lunch...

Redwood Regional Park

We had the whole morning ahead of us...

as we headed from the hills of El Cerrito...

(protester statues on the University St. bridge as seen from the 580)

over to the hills in Oakland...

Places that are now closed plus dinner & a movie! Little Star Pizza & "Episode IV: A New Hope"

As we left Oakland and headed towards Berkeley,

we could see Sather Tower in the distance...

The Hog's Apothecary

Like unknowing fools, we actually reparked when we could have just easily walked here...

The Hog's Apothecary was just one block away from Homeroom...

Sub Rosa Coffee

Diagonally across from 1-2-3-4-Go! Records is this building...

which houses a guitar and bike shop as well as a tiny coffee place...

1-2-3-4 Go! Records

One of TC's requests during our trip was to visit record stores, particularly this one...

known as 1-2-3-4 Go!

Summer Road Trip Day 1 - Homeroom

Leaving waaaay before the crack of dawn...as in 3 am, we set off for our annual summer road trip...

to the Bay Area and Northern California. Our first stop was the Starbucks in Tustin off the Red Hill Drive exit; it opens at 4:30 and we got there right when they opened...

Summer Road Trip 2015 - Day 1 Highlights

We were on the road again...

This time in celebration of our upcoming 20 year anniversary...

Yes, twenty years people!

Burma Superstar

We were going to dinner with one of my former students (MFS c/o 2000) and her BF. She is a musician and is in a band (plays bass, keyboards, guitar and sings). I can't believe she's nearing her 30's!

I'd been wanting to try Burma Superstar since reading about it on Wandering Chopstick's blog...

Scream Sorbet

And we're back...

Just a few minutes from Piedmont was our next destination - Scream Sorbet in the Temescal neighborhood in Oakland.

Yeah, this was one of those "artisanal/boujie" places...

Around Oakland again...

After our awesome lunch at Uncle Dougie's Italian Heroes downtown, we went back to the Piedmont area. This was the same neighborhood that had Fenton's and other cute shops. We wanted to get dessert but weren't sure what was around there...

We wanted ice cream...

No Worries, I mean Do the Dougie!

One of my former students (c/o 2000) with whom I still correspond, emailed me a few restaurant recommendations for our road trip.  Some of them included Zachary's Pizza (Chicago deep dish style; I'm not too crazy about deep dish though), Brown Sugar Kitchen (a modern soul food'ish place), and No Worries (recommended because she went to university with one of the main chefs). The last plce, No Worries caught my attention because it was a "Filipino Vegan" restaurant.

Wut?

As one yelp reviewer noted, Filipino and Vegan together is like saying "healthy cigarette".  We just had to check this place out. Being quite anal organized, I already researched their menu and was intrigued. Bert wasn't so sure about this place. The menu items had the usual suspects - kare kare, afritada, menudo, pancit, adobo and so on but instead of meat, it was tofu (or some other soy based protein).  It sounded okay on paper but we wanted to at least try one dish before jumping in completely.

Unfkgfortunately, their website was NOT updated. They were closed on Mondays although the website indicated their M-F hours. Okayyyyy....

Day 3 - Lake Merritt

Well, it's been one month since our vacation and I'm still slogging through the posts...To recap, this was our third day in the Bay Area. We were originally going to go back to the Marin side and perhaps go to Mount Tam (Tamalpais) and/or the Muir Woods but I didn't really want to go back. We wanted to stay local so we remembered TC's request to go back to the Lake...

Lake Merritt is a large manmade lake in the middle of downtown Oakland. It was the U.S.'s first wildlife refuge in 1870. The pedestrian/biking path is 3.1 miles around. We got there around 9:30 am when it was still cool and overcast. There were lots of people walking their dogs, strolling their babies, jogging, etc. This is the Southeastern view of the Lake.

Fenton's Creamery

Although TC wanted to walk around Lake Merritt, we decided to save that for another day (which we did) and headed straight over for dessert at a venerable Oakland institution known as Fenton's Creamery...

Around Oakland...

Here are a few pix from driving around in Oakland...

Oh yeah dude, Grillz!!! The "Best Gold Teeth"!

Merritt Bakery

Years ago, when we used to visit Thane during his grad school years (mid 90's), we went to Roscoe Chicken and Waffles in Oakland. We thought it was meh. Since we like trying new places, I sought out rec's from various sources. One of my former students who now lives in SF recommended a new and hip soul food place, Brown Sugar Kitchen as well as a Filipino Vegan place (WTF, right?) called No Worries. Then, I remembered an older post by the knowledgeable Wandering Chopsticks (link at end of post) about this old school bakery near Lake Merritt in Oakland.