Return to 30th Street Cafe

While shoppers were busy mercilessly mowing down competitors for $100 TV's or the latest Xboxes, we pondered our lunch choices...

Our tree was now festooned with a motley mix of Star Wars ornaments, Philippine capiz shell baubles, and TC's handmade ornaments from early grade school...

Up to North Park we went where we noticed the garland of Christmas lights already strung up on the University Ave. overpass. I was delighted because that stretch of the 805 would now be lit up bridge by bridge (it was also on the El Cajon and Adams Ave bridges)...

Bert was craving sandwiches so sandwiches it was!

European Cake Gallery

So with my barely working Garmin (the batteries were weak but barely working), we were able to find this place, the European Cake Gallery...

on Voltaire Street in Point Loma. I hadn't been here in years. In fact, the last time I was here was back in 1994 when Bert and I were still engaged and trying out different wedding cake vendors! A few of our friends had utilized European Cake Gallery for their wedding cakes.

For the record, we ended up choosing a different vendor for our cake which was made by a sweet little old lady who lived in the College Area. Back in the early to mid 90's, it was popular to have white chocolate shavings on your cakes. This place was a purveyor of that style of cake at the time. It looked pretty but I suppose it's kind of dated now.

Anyhow..let's go in shall we?

Return to the United Portuguese S.E.S. Market

Seen in Point Loma few weeks ago during the break, mayoral signs. It's down to two candidates now for the runoff in February...

Faulconer is the top contender and the Republican choice...

Now this guy didn't make the cut. Plus, he flip flopped his political party! WTH...

We live in Chula Vista, so we can't vote for the Mayor of San Diego...

Somewhere in the hills of Point Loma, a sign for the other mayoral candidate, David Alvarez, who is a Democrat.

I was actually surprised to see an Alvarez sign here since Point Loma is pretty white and conservative. Many of the Alvarez signs I've seen are south of the 8.

After the fiasco that happened earlier this year with Bob Filner, it will be great to have a new mayor who isn't a lecherous pervert! It could be worse, we could have a crack smoking foul-mouthed mayor like Toronto (sorry my Canadian friends)!

But enough about politics, TC and I were here to pick up a few items from San Diego's only Portuguese market...

Valerio's City Bakery, National City

I'm kind of jumping around here, eh.

I can't believe I haven't been to this place yet, the original Valerio's in National City! For many Filipinos in San Diego, the name Valerio's is synonymous with Filipino bread and pastries.

It was right across the street from Ching's Famous Hopia Bakeshop, plus TC wanted to try one of their famous desserts...

Return to the Julian Cider Mill

We couldn't leave Julian without having some of their cider...

We'd been here a couple of years ago and made a quick stop before heading out for lunch...

Ching's Famous Hopia Bakeshop

TC and I were craving gelato and I thought we could visit this new'ish gelato place on the corner of Fern and Grape (which was the site of the former Fern St. Cafe), it had recently opened as Piacere Mio, a cafe and gelato bar.

We saw the giant ice cream cone on top of the building during our Fall break excursion here back with KDD and KDB and made a mental note to come back...

The Julian Pioneer Museum, Town Hall, and the Candy Basket

Ah, crapola. I forgot to put in this post (and another) so now my Julian posts aren't in order!

After picking up our  pastries (aka )food souvenirs from the Candied Apple Pastry Company, we walked across the street to check out the Julian Pioneer Museum...

since we didn't see it two years ago. I figured, we're in Julian, so let's learn about Julian, right?

Panchita's Bakery, Golden Hill

Earlier that morning I read a Kirbie's post that San Diego's Finest Donuts really had cronuts, and if you can believe their misleading facebook page, macarons as well.

This was NOT the case when TC and I stopped by. The same lady was there as before and she was a little more forthcoming about when they had cronuts, which is Friday and Saturdays. She said they sell out pretty quickly. Maybe they only make ten  of them, jeez, who really knows. If you only saw their fb page, you would think they were some high end bakery with the beautiful photos of their nonexistent items, when they are just really an average donut place. Well, if I'm ever going to try a fake cronut, I would rather try Paris Baguette's version since I'm not about to jet off to NYC for the real thing, eh.

So enough about that crap. I had Plan B in mind...

in which we would make the short trek over to Golden Hill and satisfy my current obsession for Mexican bakeries...

A movie we want to see plus two boy bands!

I almost forgot about this little excursion...just a few steps up was the Ken Video which always has cool movie posters on their window.

Last time I was here, the poster was the Australian film, "The Sapphires".

We'd been wanting to see the newest (although released in Japan in 2011) Miyazaki film, "From Up on Poppy Hill" for the longest time, but someone was hogging the only copy at our local Blockbuster...

The Haven 3x

It was hard going back to work after having had one week off. Then again, I'm not complaining since some folks might not have had the same luxury. Our mantra at work is...three more (actually two and a half) more weeks!

Last week I gave TC the choice of where to go based on the coupons I had and she chose Kensington...

She said "Kensington" the way Austin Powers says, "Oh....Mrs. Kensington!", hahah....

She wasn't feeling it for Mexican or Ethiopian food, so pizza it was!

Time to break out the GOOD Christmas music...

Our post Thanksgiving festivities consisted of watching these two "family friendly" movies...

(Sarcasm alert!)

The first, a classic coming of age story, the other, a hilarious British comedy replete with a plethora of profanity with F-bombs galore. Just the thing to watch for later that evening after TC and I decorated the tree.

Our tree decorating music, however was not obscenity laced but rather, music that I would rather hear piped into the strip malls rather than the commercialized infernal crap that they play (i.e. Kenny G, Mariah Carey, Mannheim Steamroller, Boyz to Men, and "insert latest-manufactured-Disney-Auto-tuned-sensation here" etc)...

Here are just a few of the holiday CD's from my collection:

Got the picture? Good. If you're going to my house, you ain't gonna hear any of that OTHER music...