Weekend getaway

This past weekend we enjoyed a quick trip to Oakland. Randy was asked a couple weeks ago to give a presentation on joint care for a Hemophilia Conference at Oakland Children's Hospital. The Foundation booked him a hotel room Friday night, so we all came along! As soon as Randy got home from work we hopped in the van, stopped at In-N-Out Burger for dinner, and drove to Pleasanton to stay the night. We were hoping the hotel had an indoor pool (an exciting activity when it's not summer), but they didn't. However, since we didn't have to pay for the hotel, I was NOT complaining. Instead, we just checked out sooner than planned, ate a quick breakfast at Denny's, and got an earlier start on our visit to the Oakland Zoo. I am so glad that we did! This is a fantastic zoo with activities, play areas, and exhibits suitable for very young kids! And since we're members at the Chaffee Zoo here in Fresno, we got 1/2 off the admission price! Randy joined us for the first hour and then headed up the 580 a couple miles to give his presentation. The weather was pretty cold and windy, but we were dressed accordingly. We also got some light rain in the late afternoon, but had a fun time ducking under the canopy near the monitor lizard for a snack break. Our highlight of the day was watching the alligators get fed! It was uncanny how close we were to the humongous animals. It just didn't seem right. When Randy returned 3 hours later we still hadn't seen everything! The kids had a fun time running back to some of their favorite areas to show Dad what they'd seen or done. We left the zoo as they were closing at 4 o'clock and let each kid pick out a small memento from the gift shop.

On the way home, we stopped at Pyzano's Pizzeria in Castro Valley for a slice of award-winning, world-famous pizza! It's just a hole in the wall restaurant at a strip mall off the freeway! And no reservations needed...just walk on in! How did we even know about this place? Well, after deciding to visit the Oakland zoo, I googled restaurants in the surrounding area for dinner and found this article. It caught my eye immediately...I recognized the picture! I went to my cookbook cupboard and pulled out my recipe folder, full of articles I've torn out from past Sunset and Cooking Light magazines. I had torn out this exact article from Sunset magazine in March 2004! When I first read about Tony Gemignani and his pizza, I decided to give his recipes a try and made the dough and sauce for Audrey's 3rd birthday party. We (myself and all the guests) had a great time tossing the dough ourselves, just like the article said. It turned out fantastic! I've used his recipe every time since. The original article did note that his restaurant is in Castro Valley, but I had no idea where that was. Now realizing that it was a town just south of Oakland, I called the phone number in the article to get directions. We were not dissappointed! It's just your normal pizza place, with TVs on the wall, arcade games in the back, plastic mugs filled with soda and beer. It just also happens to have a dozen or so pizza awards framed and on the walls, as well as pictures of famous people posing with Tony and his brother (co-owners) that have come to eat the pizza. The kids got some balls of pizza dough to play with at the table while we were waiting for our order...fun idea! And after we filled our tummies with gooey, cheesy bread-sticks, soda, and scrumptious pizza pie, we loaded back up in the van and headed home. A quick, but wonderful weekend getaway!