Alameda with Roxane

One of the new old friends from the reunion, Roxane, has a daughter who lives only a couple of hours from me, and Roxane was at her daughter's house last weekend. I drove on Saturday, Route 4, to 238 to 880, and off the freeways, finally, near the Oakland Airport, to Alameda. I went to the Coral Reef, where Roxane had left a key to her room for me at the front desk, and went to her room where she appeared a few minutes later. We knew each other through college, and only reconnected at our 50th reunion, and it is an amazing gift to be her friend today. We had supper at the Bombay Superstar, where I've been with my son a number of times. Here's the tea leaf salad!

Clockwise from the upper right corner: powdered shrimp, peanuts, dried garbanzos, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, roasted garlic slices, chopped red bell pepper, and at 12 o'clock, a lemon. The center is a bed of rice with the tea leaf dressing, which is in consistency like pesto, but a flavor unlike anything I've eaten. Salty, spicy, savory. They serve it like as it appears, and then toss it for you. All tossed, it's not as beautiful, but the flavors and textures are perfection. 

After dinner, we went across the street and browsed in a bookstore, that I thought was independent, but my son, Will, informs me that it's a chain of independent-looking bookstores! I practiced restraint, but Roxane found a few books to buy. Then we went to Tucker's for ice cream - it's famous, and rightly so. They had purple yam ice cream, which we tasted, but it had no particular taste at all except sweet.

After much conversation, and a night's sleep, we went to breakfast, and to the San Francisco Airport, nicely avoiding the Giant's game.

I drove home, reversing the route, and skipping Stockton, so you can add Routes 204 and 180 east, and leave out I5 north. If I were writing from Southern California, I would put the word "the" in front of the route number. The 580 to the 180. Southern and northern California are different states.