Why I love the Bay Area

Considering I have some REALLY great friends in the bay area, I’ve been fortunate enough to make a trip up there from time to time and explore so many different things and areas. I actually have not spent much time in the actual city of San Francisco, but in the cute and quaint towns of Saratoga, Los Gatos, Campbell, Palo Alto and Cupertino. The closest airport to fly into in San Jose, and let me tell you, it’s MUCH nicer than flying into the craziness that is SFO!

Aside from my fun fitness adventure in VAULTING, which details can be seen HERE, and also aside from the fact that my “Bay Area Babes” want me to move there, I love how technically ahead the bay area is compared to other places in the country AND I LOVE how healthy they are!! Everywhere you turn, there are incredibly healthy options on every corner. A couple of the places that I went and really liked were the following:

Lyfe Kitchen – We stopped here just for appetizers, so just had sweet potato fries, but they weren’t fried and crunchy, but were baked! I probably could have eaten there every day and had something different. They have a great variety of tacos, plates, bowls, salad and healthy sides.. they even offer filtered infused waters made in-house. Most of the entrees have whole grain bread (which is very hard to find at most restaurants), and gluten free objects. They also seemed very SODIUM conscious. This was located in Cupertino, right near the Apple campus.

Kula Revolving Sushi Bar – This is where we ended up for our actual meal that day. They are also in Cupertino, walking distance from Lyfe Kitchen, and was just an experience! Basically the sushi is all on a conveyer belt and you don’t need a server to order anything, you either pull it from the belt and each plate that you “dispose” of shows up on your little screen that you can order from, pay with, etc. SO innovative and just fun!! And the sushi was great as well! That one is just a fun experience if you like sushi!

Local Union 271 – This one is a “farm to table” restaurant in Palo Alto. Again, a GREAT menu with several healthier options, and apparently the burgers are pretty fabulous as well as that’s what almost everyone in our group ordered! I had a side salad and an ahi tuna stack.

I did go to a few other restaurants that weren’t necessarily health conscious, but I can always find something “suitable” for my eating lifestyle (not diet!).

I also visited a really cute tea shop in Campbell (another very cute area) when we were there to visit one of my great friend’s significant other’s NEWLY acquired restaurant La Pizzeria. They also made sure to tell me that they offered whole wheat and gluten free crust and only the finest local ingredients. I could honestly go on and on about all of the amazing places that I walked by that were local, organic and EVERYTHING is dog friendly, which is so fabulous too! In fact, my friend started a new blog about dog friendly places in the bay area called The Pup That Roams, will post more on that soon!

My friend also said that Vitality Bowls is an incredible place! See there menu HERE. I definitely want to try that next time. They offer all sorts of bowls that are all natural with organic granola, all sorts of fruits and superfoods, for breakfast and desert, as well as panini sandwiches, smoothies and and juices with plenty of whole grain and gluten free options. This is why I could easily live in the bay area! It is a very “green” area when it comes to being healthy and fit! We also hit up a very extensive farmer’s market there on Sunday morning!

Something else that we also did that was REALLY neat was called TeamLab in Menlo Park. It is basically an art exhibit centered around technology and it is mind blowing! One thing that we did was walked down a hallway with all these strings up lights and you could log in on your phone to their app and put new “things” into the “universe”. So if we sent a bright orange star, it would take about 30 seconds and the lights would be all in sync as the star went through the entire exhibit. Another thing that was REALLY cool was when we were told to color in an object that we got to choose. There were several tables and naturally, I chose a seahorse. I made it all these crazy colors so it would really stand out, because the next thing you do is take it over to a table and hold the paper under a light scanner. It would scan, and then magically your object would appear ALIVE on a GIANT. My seahorse started swimming around in this background under the sea slowly going across the entire wall. I’ll share pictures below, it was SO amazing, such a fun and creative experience!

This video shows my now “alive” seahorse (and everyone else’s fishies) swimming across the giant wall!

Thanks to Juliana for a GREAT trip as well as all of the other girls!  Here are a few photos from the amazing trip, I can’t wait to go back!