Saturday, September 30, 2006

You just have to stop here..

The place is San Juan Bautista -

it's off Highway 101 a bit south of Gilroy - a perfect stop on your way to Monterey. We went to stop for lunch at Jardines, a Mexican restaurant, with a beautiful courtyard and cactus garden -- they also have a cacuts & succulent show and sale as a special treat for those of you, that have a soft spot for this prickly plant.

On our walk down the little main street I loved that little gift store "Paloma, Paloma"..



But the fun does not stop here - when we walked further we stumbled into the lobby of a hotel and felt we time traveled.. until we realized that the historic museum has a living history celebration every first Saturday of the month ...very cool - especially for the kids.





You might never go there - but you really should - you would love that place, I promise!!

Friday, September 29, 2006

The Wild Parrots of Jefferson School


Yes... you probably heard of this man, Mark Bittner, author of "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill". A San Francisco homeless man, who gained Hollywood fame by feeding a flock of wild parrots that live on San Francisco's Telegraph Hill. I have watched the movie, and those parrots are really spectacular (and so is Mark, being quite a strange kind of bird himself). What I really like about this story is, that it's thanks to the parrots that Mark gets married to the filmaker, and probably lives a pretty good live right now...

Those must be lucky birds... -

...you might think:" so what??..This is not a new story!"

BUT..

when walking to my daughters school the other day I heard a tropical, screaming sound coming from a tree right infront of the school - I looked up but could not see anything. And when I told my daughter about it later on she said:" oh, that's just the parrots from the trees...." WHAT? Mark's wild parrots in Berkeley? I went back today to investigate and as I was looking up in the sky thinking:"....there is no way.."I heard that same noise again and there they were.... THE WILD PARROTS OF JEFFERSON SCHOOL!

We are so lucky to have them!