A few days in Ulm

It's been a while since my last trip to visit my team in Ulm, so time to prepare myself for a few days of Scwhabian food, culture and perhaps the odd Hefeweisse.

I arrived in Munich late Monday evening, and much to my surprise, ran into Tony (who works in my team) at the airport! Nice surprise, so I didn't need to drive down to Ulm on my own...

My Ulm visit started properly with a night out at Zur Zill, a rather nice little bar/restaurant by the canal. This time, thankfully, the weather was also suitably warm (the sun rarely seems to come out during my visits to Ulm for some odd reason). Most of the usual suspects were there – Olli, Jose, William, Sakari? David; and my good mate Sami from my days in Southwood. Things proceeded as they usually do in Ulm; a couple of hefeweisse, some Schwabian food (which normally means pig and potato), followed by Eisbock (an evil and strong potion masquerading as beer) at Zunfthaus der Schiffleute (one of my favourite eating/drinking establishments in Ulm). The predictable headache materialised the next day, yes thank you very much... ;)

On Wednesday, we had a rather nice team lunch at a Chinese restaurant near the office. Pretty good value food, and tasty too! In the evening, I had a rather calm evening, dining at Restaurant zur Lochmuhle, a very nice little eaterie by the canal. A sort of slightly higher class version of Zur Zill, where we'd gone the night before. Excellent food, for a rather reasonable price!

Thursday was the last night in Ulm, so we decided to have another “team meal” out – this time we had Mexican at a restaurant rather charmingly located on the Danube river, with rather nice views. Unfortunately, the famous Ulm rain assailed us rather quickly, so we ended up inside. Anyways, the food was pretty decent – I had a go at the famous Mole sauce (a chocolate sauce spiced with some chili – of course!) – not a bad choice. After the meal, we naturally ended up going to that famous Ulm institution, Barfusser. No visit to Ulm is complete with a hefeweisse or two at Barfusser. So an appropriate way to end a rather busy week in Ulm, then!

More Glamour in Cannes and Monaco

The upcoming weekend is truly “glamour galore” on the Cote d'Azur, as the festival of Cannes ends, and the normally sleepy Monaco welcomes the Formula 1 Circus.

Before the glamour, a bit of nature – since our good friend JayJay was visiting, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to try my hand at some sea Kayaking, seeing as Jay Jay is a bit of a pro at that. We didn't realise our “planned” Marseille-Nice trip yet, rather we decided on a decidedly less ambitious session around Cap d'Ail (which appears to be the only place apart from Antibes on the Riviera where they rent sea kayaks). Turns out the rental place is a very nice coastal walk from the Cap d'Ail train station, nearly in Monaco!

So I had the sudden inspirational idea for the Grand Prix weekend – rent a sea kayak, and watch the race from the port from the kayak! Hmm, not possible, unfortunately, the guy at the rental agency said – no sea kayaks allowed in the port (only big yachts, I suppose...). Well, anyways, we had a very nice sea kayaking session, with a rather scenic view of the coastline, followed by a nice lunch by the beach. We took the train back towards Nice from Monaco, so got a bit of a taster of the Formula 1 biz (or rather, an earful!), since the practice session was on...

We still had some tickets for the Director's Fortnight festival in Cannes, so we decided to use them up on Saturday. Since our dear friend Naim is heading off to Belgium for work, we invited him along, so we could catch up with him before he's off. Due to train hassle, we arrived at Cannes just before the screening was supposed to start – we had very low hopes for getting in. But much to our surprise, we did get in! We saw an Algerian movie called the “Le Repenti”, a rather interesting film about a former Muhajeddin, trying to adjust to civilian life, and finding it rather hard...

After the movie, we had a lunch/dinner at a very nice Lebanese restaurant...

Following the meal, me and Naim made our way over to Monaco, where we were planning to meet up with some friends, including Kartsa, a Finnish mate of mine from my UK years, who works for McLaren. We were about an hour late, thanks to our dear friends at SNCF again, but finally did meet at the classic Monaco GP meetup bar – La Rascasse (yes, it is located in that famous corner, by the race track). Great to meet Kartsa again, it's been a couple of years since we last met! We were also joined by none other than Paddy Lowe; the technical director at McLaren, who actually used to be Naim's boss! He was a very nice guy indeed.

The journey back to Cagnes was rather challenging, as it often is during the Monaco GP weekend. Naturally, SNCF were on partial strike, so the last two trains were cancelled, and the night bus took about 2 hours to get to Nice airport. Since I didn't fancy waiting for an hour for the bus going to Cagnes, I decided to cycle home on the velo bleu... Total journey time – about 4 hours. Oh well, it was great fun anyway ;)

Festival glamour @ Cannes

Time for some glamour on the Cote d’Azur again! Yes, Cannes film festival time! I, as some of you perhaps know, am a bit of a film fanatic, so naturally a couple of nights in Cannes are a must. I have to say though, that Cannes is not my favourite festival as far as seeing movies is concerned. For me, Cannes is mostly about rich people being seen and photographed, and us mere mortals trying to get a glimpse of glamour. Sure, there are plenty of films to see, but one could argue that all the queuing is maybe not worth the effort. Well, I reckon it’s still just about worth it, in the end ;-)





So off we went then, on a public holiday, to try and use some of our Director’s Fortnight tickets (one of the Cannes festivals mere mortals can actually get tickets for). Things were a bit complicated by the fact that the last train was something like 21:10 in the evening (cheers, SNCF), and our film was starting at 19:00 (or something like that). Well, we needn’t have worried – the queue for the film (Michel Gondry’s latest) was just ridiculously long, and we didn’t get in… Oh well, such is life… So we ended up going celebrity-spotting instead (I managed to snap some shots of a guy signing autographs at the Canal+ studio on the Croisette – no idea who it was, though!). After an aperitif at a bar in the port, it was time to catch our train…

On Friday, our dear friend JayJay was arriving in Nice, all the way from Mexico, to spend a few weeks with his darling Marie, before heading over to Iceland for a couple of months of work (he’s a marine biologist – Iceland ought to be a pretty good place to study marine mammals at least, in spite of the decidedly un-Mexican climate!). Since Marie doesn’t have a car, we decided to pick him up and give him a ride to Nice. We spent a rather nice extended aperitif with Marie and JJ, catching up and making ambitious travel plans (me and JJ have some very hazy plans about a kayaking trip from Marseille to Nice – but figured we might go for something a bit less ambitious first). Very nice catching up with JJ again – hopefully we’ll see more of him in September when he’s back on the Riviera!

On Saturday, we decided to venture into Cannes again – we still had those darn tickets to make use of. This time, we headed down to Cannes La Bocca, to another venue. The queue was shorter this time than on Thursday, but we still had no luck! This time, it turned out that the tickets were no good for this venue – they are only valid at the main venue off the Croisette! There you go then… Not about to give up, we made our way back to Palais Stephani, and queued again… Obviously third time is sometimes the charm – we got in this time! We saw the latest film of the late and great Raoul Ruiz, Le Noche de Efrente. I haven’t seen many films by Mr Ruiz, but I loved his last one (the Mysteries of Lisbon). This one, however, was a bit, dare I say, arty-farty for me. Or perhaps I just wasn’t in the right mood for it after all that queuing… Anyways, at least we got to see a movie finally! ;)

Fine dining in Juan-les-Pins

Back on the Cote d’Azur, but no time to rest or recover from the jet lag! My parents were heading back to Finland, and wanted to dine with us before that. So, we opted for dinner at Juan-les-Pins, a place we don’t often venture to. Juan-les-Pins is known to be a bit of a party spot for holiday makers on the Cote d’Azur, and is also rather famous for its jazz festival (there’s also a kind of “walk of fame” for jazz musicians, with handprints on the ground, like they have for movie stars in Cannes).


After some deliberation, we selected Le Paradise as the venue, a rather well-rated restaurant by the seafront. We were a bit dubious, since seafront often means “over-priced” rather than “good food”. We needn’t have worried, this place is well worthy of its good reviews. The food was a bit on the steep side, but very well presented, and most importantly, absolutely delicious. The location is pretty much perfect, being on the beach. A pity we didn’t truly get a sea view from our table. But for sure, it’s a place I could well consider going back to in the future!


It was great catching up with my parents and Tutta (whom we’ve not seen for absolute ages) as well. All in all, quite a nice way to settle back to reality and working life!

A few days in the Silicon Valley

I guess each software engineer needs to go to the Silicon Valley at least once in their lives. This is, after all, where quite a few of the modern-day companies were born. Google, E-Bay, HP and Apple are just a few of the companies that were born here. So, me being a software engineer, I was rather looking forward to seeing what the Silicon Valley was like, for a few days at least.

After picking up my colleague Sakari at the airport, we made our way down to Sunny Vale, where we were going to spend the next few days. After checking in at our hotel, we made our way into the “town center” for dinner. I put town center in quotes, since Sunnyvale is, like pretty much all of the Silicon Valley, more or less a residential suburb, with a few offices dotted amongst the residential houses. Sunnyvale does have one “historic street” with plenty of restaurants, Murphy street (named after the founder of Sunnyvale, Martin Murphy Jr.). Actually, Sunnvale does date back to the 20th century, but there isn’t much of historic interest left to see. Anyways, we ended up dining in the Firestone steakhouse – a nice enough eatery serving rather tasty burgers.

The next day, Timo, a fellow Finn working at our Silicon Valley office had promised to take us for a tour of Palo Alto. Palo Alto is home to one of the most prestigious teaching establishments in the US of A, Standford University. We started our visit of Palo Alto by having a walk around the campus. Stanford University was founded in 1891 by a railroad tycoon called Leland Stanford. The campus is very impressive, but I have to say I was less endeared to the place than to Berkley. The buildings look somehow more austere than the ones in Berkley. But, nonetheless, I was quite impressed by the Memorial church, and the Rodin sculpture garden.

Having done the touristy bit, we made our way to the “strip” with its restaurants. It’s a fair bit more lively than the Sunnyvale equivalent – unsurprising given the student connection, I suppose. We ended up in a very nice Asian-Latino fusion restaurant – I had some rather excellent tapas.

On Wednesday, we decided to go for some proper burgers for lunch (instead of tempting the canteen, or ordering in pizza). We ended up in a real Silicon Valley institution (apparently), St John's. Well, the burgers were good - and the bar looked pretty cool as well. Fot the evening, some of our colleagues wanted to discuss one a project of theirs with us, and kindly enough bought us dinner. We made our way to an Italian restaurant in San Jose, where they pitched their ideas to us. It all felt very Silicon Valley like, so it was quite an experience. One of the chaps was a real Silicon Valley veteran as well, so he had some funny “war stories” to tell.

Thursday was our last night out, so we finished off with dinner together with Heng, Tuukka and Leif, who’d been working with us all week. We ended up in a Chinese restaurant near the Sunnyvale office. The food was kind of average, but it was all good fun anyway.

That brought an end to my stint in the US of A, as we caught our flight back to Europe the next day. All in all, it had been quite an interesting experience to see what the Silicon Valley is all about!

More Bay Area exploration

After rather a long drive from the Sierra Nevada, we finally arrived at San Francisco airport, where we were dropping off the car. At the airport, we had the chance to have a quick coffee and catch up with Aurelien and Julie, who were catching their flight back to France, having also visited Gilles and Valerie (our schedules were just such that our paths didn’t cross until now). They had done a pretty cool “western US” road trip (taking in Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, San Diego and Los Angeles), and from the sound of things they’d had a fantastic time. After waving our good-byes to them, we made our way back to Sausalito.

We started Saturday with a quick visit to San Francisco. Our first stop was at the de Young museum, located in Golden Gate Park. It’s a rather interesting museum hosting an impressive and varied collection, including a fair bit of American art, but also a really impressive collection of art from Asia and the Pacifics. Pretty impressive stuff. There was also a temporary exhibition on Jean-Paul Gauthier, which was actually surprisingly interesting. I can’t say I expected to end up in an exhibition about fashion; oh well… The views from the rooftop over San Francisco and Golden Gate Park are pretty impressive as well.

Our cultural appetite sated, it was time to sate our culinary appetites – and what better place for that than Mel’s Diner? We discovered this lovely little nostalgic diner, decorated with memorabilia from the 50’s and 60’s, during our last visit to San Francisco, and naturally we had to pay a visit there again… A replica of Mel’s Diner was used as a location for George Lucas’ movie American Graffiti. The food is of the honest diner variety, and reasonably priced. I like the place.

During the afternoon, we explored the Marine Headlands, a beautiful piece of Californian landscape, located just next to Golden Gate bridge, near Sausalito. The views from there towards Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco are simply stunning. We also visited the Marine Mammal Centre, a kind of hospital for marine mammals (mostly harbor and elephant seals). A rather interesting place to visit…

We spent the rest of the afternoon chilling out at the nearby beach, checking out the surfers taking on the big waves, and just enjoying the nice weather…


In the evening, we were meeting up for dinner with Isabelle and Carlol in Sausalito. Isabelle is a good friend of ours from France, who is passing through San Francisco on her way to Seattle, where she’s attending a wedding. Carol is a friend of Isabelle’s, whom I had the pleasure of meeting over in Guildford, where we used to live. Carol (who lives up in Santa Rosa, not too far away) had booked a very nice seafood restaurant for the occasion. It was a great night out, fantastic to catch up with Isabelle, and great to see Carol again.

The next day, it was sadly time for me to say bye-bye to Mathilde, who was heading back to France… I was staying for work for a few days longer, though, so still had the Sunday to kill, after picking up my rental car at the airport. The plan was to meet up with Isabelle and Carol for lunch in Oakland, but since I had a couple of hours to kill before that, I made my way to nearby Berkley. Berkley is, of course, famous for its university, one of the best ones in the USA. Berkley is also famous for its political dissidents – people had very strong opinions about the Vietnam War here, for example.

I really liked the campus area, it’s pretty much exactly how you imagine a university campus. Pompous stone buildings, big libraries, greenery, and an interesting mix of students was all there to be seen. After a brief stroll around there, I made my way to Telegraph Avenue, which is kind of the main street crossing the most “student y” part of Berkley. It was a pretty cool place, I was positively surprised to find some of that famous hippie spirit alive in this part of town. Plenty of old and young hippies, students, dodgy-looking characters, and interesting shops to be found…. (herb shops, second hand record shops, book shops, that sort of thing…).

After my quick visit to Berkley, I made my way to nearby Oakland for our scheduled lunch. Oakland has a bit of a bad reputation, so is not on the usual California tourist trail, but from what I’d read about it, it seemed like a place worth a visit – and since Carol actually has a house there, this was pretty much the perfect occasion.


So we made our way to Jack London Square, the redeveloped port area. As you may have guessed, Jack London was an Oakland resident for some time – so we decided to make our way straight to Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon – a regular haunt of Mr. London’s. It’s a brilliant little bar, full of cool memorabilia, but the crowd is, somewhat surprisingly, mostly made up of locals rather than tourists. After a drink at this historic landmark, we made our way for a rather late and hurried lunch.


And then it was time to bid my farewells to Isa and Carol, as I had a colleague to pick up at San Francisco airport…. That brought an end to our fantastic holiday, then… To summarize the past few weeks – it was great. We will surely be back!

Hiking in Yosemite

One of the places I’ve wanted to visit for a long time is the Yosemite National Park, located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This week, we were going to make this wish come true…

So, early Tuesday morning, we jumped in the car and headed west. It’s quite a drive to Yosemite, so we stopped over for lunch at Jamestown, a gold rush era town, not far from Sacramento, where we’d been just a couple of days earlier. We found a very nice little saloon (which was actually a bit of a historic landmark, dating back to the 19th century – a couple of US presidents had even stopped there for some food).

We arrived in the National Park in the afternoon, and made our way straight to our hotel, in Wawona (Wawona is one of the communities in the national park – the other one being Yosemite Valley village). We were already treated to some rather stunning views over the Yosemite Valley during the drive to Wawona.

Our hotel was quite a historic landmark as well – also dating back to the 19th century. It’s entirely constructed from wood, and has retained a fair bit of its old world charm. We spent the first night in "the lobby room" (a small room located on the ground floor, by the piano bar!), due to an unfortunate mistake in our planning (we arrived a day early!). Not the most convient room in the hotel... But never mind, the most important thing is that we had a place to sleep for the night! (Accommodation in Yosemite is rather scarce).

Before retiring for the day, we decided to visit nearby Mariposa Grove, famous for its Giant Sequoia trees. These giants are not as tall as the redwood trees we saw in Muir Woods, but have much thicker trunks, so are perhaps in the end more imposing. We checked out the main sights in the grove, including Old Grizzly (one of the oldest and biggest trees in the grove – it is indeed an impressive sight!) as well as the tunnel tree (another rather huge tree with a hole in it big enough to probably fit a small car). After dinner at the hotel (the dining options are also rather limited in Yosemite…), we retired at our lobby room.

The next day, it was time for some serious hiking. We started off by visiting the rather impressive bridal veil waterfalls, which are on the way to Yosemite Valley from Wawona. We had chosen the perfect time to visit Yosemite, from the point of view of waterfalls viewing, as the melting slow up in the Sierra Nevadas provide plenty of water for the waterfalls…

We then made our way into the valley, and decided to do a walk up to Yosemite Falls (the highest waterfalls in the park). It’s quite a strenuous walk, representing a height difference of nearly 1000 meters. After some rather strenuous climbing, we finally arrived at our first stop, Columbia rock, from where we were treated to some rather stunning views over the Yosemite Valley (including the famous Half Dome Mountain). From there, the hike leveled off somewhat, taking us towards Yosemite Falls. Finally, the waterfall came into view – a stunning sight, I can honestly say! Our walk took us quite close to the fall, close enough for us to even get wet (the amplitude of the waterfall is quite considerable, considering we got wet, even standing at least a hundred meters away from the waterfall!).

The hike then started another heavy ascent, taking us in parallel up all the way to the top of the waterfalls, where we stopped for a well-deserved lunch. It’s hard to imagine a more perfect spot to picnic, with those stunning views, with the roaring sound of the waterfalls underneath us…

Our appetites sated, we crossed the wild river (on a bridge!) that fed the Yosemite Falls (the huge warning signs warning people not to jump in the river seemed somewhat, erm, redundant somehow…), and continuing up to Yosemite Point, overlooking the valley. The view from there was, as you may have guessed, absolutely amazing.

We then hiked back the way we came, once more enjoying some pretty amazing views over the valley… Before making our way back to our hotel, we stopped to check out lower Yosemite falls (our hike had just shown us the top and middle sections of the waterfalls). That was one impressive waterfall, I’ll tell you that! (I believe Yosemite Falls is the 5th highest of its kind in the world, not hard to believe when you are there!). We were also treated to a wildlife sighting, as a coyote strolled past our car!

We were pretty shattered in the evening; having spent all day hiking, basically, but still had enough motivation for a bit more hiking the next day. This time, we decided to hike around glacier point, which is located on the other side of the Yosemite Valley from Yosemite Falls. Our first hike was to Sentinel Dome and Great Taft point. The walk up to sentinel dome took us a bit more than an hour of relatively easy hiking. The views from up there, towards Yosemite Falls, were naturally amazing. The famous El Capitan was also visible (one of the best places in the world for rock climbing, I hear…). What was really nice about the walk was actually the peace and quiet – there are much fewer hikers here, than in the valley.

From there, we walked through some pretty heavy pine forest towards Great Taft point, being quite surprised to find a fair bit of snow still lingering! The views from there over the valley were rather stunning, again. Once more, the peace and quiet made the exertion of the hike well worth it!

Having finished our hike, we made our way to Glacier Point, which is one of the most famous spots in Yosemite National Park, for good reason. The views over the valley from there are just stunning, no other word for it. All the major landmarks are visible from there, including El Capitan, Half Dome, Yosemite Falls, Nevada Falls… So again, a good spot to picnic!

From there, we decided to do another hike, this one taking us down to Illouette Falls. The beginning of the hike was quite pleasant and relaxing, following the edge of the valley, gradually descending towards the valley floor, until we got to the waterfalls. Unfortunately, the waterfalls are partially obscured during the entire walk, but it was still a very nice little hike to end the day with….

After one more night at Wawona hotel, it was time to leave the valley, sad as it felt… It’s certainly one of the most magical and beautiful places I’ve ever visited… I would gladly go back one day, we shall have to see!