Hotel Pics and Fun Pics

Ok, so here's some pictures of the hotel and some of the fun pictures I took yesterday.  There will be one or two (or maybe three or four) from the last post, but the majority are new pics.  Ironically, I took a lot of pics of the hotel and outside because I thought I wouldn't have enough pictures for the blog.  But, I ended up having so many that I needed to break yesterday's events into two posts.

Here's the pics of the hotel.  This is the staircase you see when you first come in.

Here's a pic I took of me in the mirror . . . and that's the bathroom door in the background.

Ooooh this is the cool green couch and the cool "art" thing when you first come into the hotel.

This is another view of the staircase and the the hotel restaurant Affinity.  There's this weird sculpture/fountain in front of the staircase (you can see it in the Affinity logo in the far left).  And there's this really long explanation of what it means . . . yeah like I said, weird.  And, i don't know why this pic is in this spot . . . these are really out of order.  oh, and I think that's my dad's arm in the bottom left-hand corner.

This is our hallway and dad is trying to open the door to our room.

Here's the fun pics.  And these are also out of order.  I didn't feel like putting them in the right order . . . and for this post I don't think it really matters.

This is the sidewalk on the way to the brewery.

This is also somewhere near the hotel and the brewery.

This is a building we passed.

Ok, so it was really hard to take all these pictures because I can't stop walking or I'll get left behind.  So it's like pictures on the run.  there was a whole wall full of these lights and I kept missing them because we were walking too fast . . . on the last try (the last light!) I finally got this.  It's in a weird setting called "split" so it put it in all these different frames.

 This is the panorama that I almost got.  The first two frames turned out neat, but then the crosswalk thingy said we could go . . . so I didn't get the last frame lol

This is a really cool clock thing that I really wanted a picture of so I ran ahead and by the time everyone else caught up I had an ok picture :)

I know this is in the other post, but I like the angle.

 This one is cool.  The wall was very textured and then there was this random spot of bricks.

I like this one--it looks like a picture you'd see on a hotel wall. What do you think of this one?

Here's the other one that I really liked.   What do you think? 

 Ok, one more that I actually liked.  The others are just kind of . . . blah.  and I was practically running while taking the pictures lol.

 That's it for now.  I think we're doing something fun tonight, so hopefully I'll get some more pictures.

The Lady of Mystery and Peggy Sue's

I saw a cool shirt at the Winchester Mystery House that said "The Lady of Mystery" . . . but it was really expensive!  If you haven't guessed yet, we went to the Winchester Mystery House yesterday evening.  But first we went out to eat.

One street to the right of the Hilton (right if you're walking out the front and left if you're walking into the building) is a little 50s diner called Peggy Sue's.  Dad and I looked into a bunch of other restaurants and they were like really expensive and some websites didn't even post the prices so that scared us a bit!  I don't really like fancy restaurants anyways and I much prefer places like Peggy Sue's.  My dad had a really spicy burger and I had a chicken burger with blue cheese!  Here are some pix of Peggy Sue's:

 This is the sidewalk on the way to Peggy Sue's--I thought it was gorgeous.

Here's dad at Peggy Sue's

And here's me with with my french fries . . . yum

Last, but not least, is the front of Peggy Sue's.  It's funny because it was practically sandwiched in between several huge expensive restaurants.  So, it looked really tiny.  Actually it was tiny inside, but I really liked it.  And, I'm so going back for a milkshake sometimes this week!

 So later that evening we went to the Winchester Mystery House which is only like 3 miles from the hotel.  The house is MASSIVE!!! . . . and weird.  Mrs. Winchester supposed built it to appease and/or confuse the spirits of the dead who were killed by the Winchester rifle.  Mrs. Winchester's daughter died and so did her husband.  When she went to a psychic she was told that the spirits of those who were killed by the Winchester rifle were haunting her.  So, she needed to build a house and never stop building it to appease them.  Construction started in 1884 and continued 24/7/365 until she died in 1922.  No joke, they NEVER stopped working on that house--not during a holiday, not during the night, not ever until she died.  The house itself is really kooky.  There's a seance room in the house and it's said she would contact the spirits to see what how they wanted her to build the house and that's where she supposedly got the plans (which sort of explains the strangeness of the house).  She was obsessed with spiderwebs, the number 13, and daisies.  Like I said, the house is really strange.  It's full of doors that open to nowhere, staircases that go right up into the ceiling, a cabinet with only a half inch of space on the inside, bathrooms with glass doors (seriously it's like the toilet was on display), windows in the floor, a room with only one entrance but three exits, and a four story tall chimney that stops one foot short of the roof (so all connecting fireplaces won't function), stairs that are 2 inches tall but two feet wide (for her arthritis--at least that has an explanation), stairs that are two feet tall but only two inches wide, and a bell tower with no way to get to it.  And there was no photography allowed indoors :(  but I got a few pictures of the behind the scenes tour (photography was allowed on that tour).

Here's dad with his hardhat on--we went into the basement and there were lots of low pipes so we were required to wear the hardhats.

Here's me with my hardhat on.  Now an interesting story about how this picture was taken.  I handed dad the camera so he could take a picture and he had his finger right in front of the lens.  So, of course, I said "wait don't take the picture, your finger's right in front of the lens."  But, as he moved his finger out of the way, somehow he ended up throwing my phone into the gravel . . . and now there's a huge dent in the casing.  Thankfully it didn't scratch the screen though.  We were both laughing because I've had the phone for years and here he has it just to take a picture and manages to do more damage in 30 seconds than I did in two years lol.  I did actually let him touch my phone again so here's the picture of me in my awesome hardhat.

I actually don't know why I took a picture of this . . . I think it's because everyone else in the tour group did and I just automatically took a picture of it as well.

The sun was behind the house so in the camera the front of the house looked black--here's probably the best pic I got of the front.  There are 160 rooms total in this house.

Here's a turret.

And here's the side of the house when I finally (stupid me) figured out that I just needed to play with the white balance . . .

That's it for now!  Oh, and I don't have any pictures of it, but after the Winchester House, we wanted to stop and get some water (and some Advil for our headaches) so even through there were little drugstores everywhere, we couldn't find a parking spot.  Lol, we drove around in circles for like an hour trying to find somewhere.  Finally we found some dinky corner store like a few miles out of the downtown area . . . and it had parking!  It's just funny how long it took us to find it . . .

I can see the sun . . . and there aren't any clouds :)

So, if you haven't guessed already, I'm in San Jose, CA right now!  I already took a bunch of pictures, but I don't feel like posting them right now.  I know that sounds lazy, but it's because I have the most horrible headache--I love flying, but I always get the worst headaches and earaches.  I can't find any Advil (I must have left it at home) but I just drank a cup of coffee and it's helping.

I'm sitting by the window in the hotel room looking out at the beautiful sun!  Well, I'm not exactly looking right now since I'm typing--and I can't look that long anyway 'cause my head still hurts.  I'm not sure what we'll be doing this evening but I'll post (hopefully pics too) as soon as I get back.  Hope you all (at least the readers in the cleveland area) are enjoying your nasty weather lol :p

Ok, so the hotel is really close to the airport and really low planes keep flying over.  If I happen to have my phone or the camera with me I'll make sure to get a picture of that.  I was so excited to see the first palm tree.  That was the first thing I looked for when dad and I got into the rental car.  So, I did get a picture of the palm tree.  And, there are a bunch of really cool (but not the best quality because it was with a cell phone camera through a window!) pictures from the plane's window.   Check back soon for some pictures and some updates about what dad and I ended up going to see.

Yes, I know

So, I'm just playing around with blog backgrounds right now trying to find one that I like.  As a result this may not even apply when you actually read this.  But, I know that palm trees are not "farmy."  I just like palm trees and I like this background (since I may have a different background up it was a photo of palm trees from shabbyblogs.com).

I've changed the background at least 5 times today . . . I can't find one I like.

Something fun for once!

Blogging is really fun.  At least, when the subject is fun.  I started another blog earlier about theology and philosophy, and while I really love studying theology and philosophy, it's really hard to post often because it requires a lot more thought than just a fun post (don't read that wrong because theology and philosophy are really fun for me . . . it's just not the same kind of fun).  So,  I decided that I needed a fun blog for . . . well . . . just fun!  I will still be posting on Never Surrender, it just won't be as frequent.  This blog, on the other hand, will probably have a lot more posts . . . and pictures too!

I hope to have some fun stories on here.  There will probably be a lot of posts on 4H :)  Eventually I'll have some posts on animal care as well.