C4C

I fell in love with Palo Alto this weekend.

The downtown area has such charm and Stanford’s campus is absolutely gorgeous.  Huge.  And gorgeous.

The first time we walked down this palm tree lined street, I was mesmerized by the endless green.  It is one of the prettiest entrances to a campus I’ve ever seen.  The second time, however, I was less impressed (and more annoyed) with the distance.  The third, fourth, and eighth time I schlepped from the hotel to campus I dragged my feet the whole way, cursing the campus for being so massive.  Freakin’ Stanford.

So yeah.  This Challenge for Charity weekend event was the reason we were in Palo Alto in the first place.

MBA kids professionals playing sports and raising money in the name of charity.  Kyle was on the basketball team.

I was on the drinking team.  🙂

After spending Friday morning on the road (and lunching in town), by the afternoon I was ready to partay.  Kyle hooped it up, I cheered, and then it was time for drinks and burritos.

I was so pleased that the dinner option was veg friendly.  They provided 4 foot long burritos by The Treehouse and in addition to the typical chicken and beef options they had a veggie filled one too.   See all those vegetables!  There were peas, zucchini, squash, mushrooms, beans, red rice, and other stuff I can’t even remember.  I’m blaming it on the Gordon Biersch.

Speaking of Gordon Biersch…

Somehow that’s where we ended up for a second dinner (slash late night drinks and apps).  After Kyle’s team lost, we made our way into town for a night cap and wound up at Gordon Biersch, where I continued (and Kyle began) the beer-fest.

We both ordered the Golden Export.  Yummy.

Kyle ordered beef sliders with crispy onion fries.

I ordered a Tapas platter with roasted garlic, bruschetta, olive tapenade and hummus with herbed flatbread.

Ok, it was WAY bigger than I expected for an appetizer.  I wasn’t even that hungry after an evening of beer and burritos, but walking through town, smelling all the amazing food, I just had to get something to eat, too.

As you would expect the flatbread was unbelievable.  Warm and fluffy, like a good carb should be.  I enjoyed the bruschetta with it’s acidic vinegar zing, but to be honest, I had no interest in the olive tapenade (I should have asked to replace it with extra hummus).  The hummus was good, but there needed to be way more.  WAY way more.  As a result, I ate 50% of the flatbread without any toppings.  Still good, though.

This guy was sitting next to us.  Sweet.

Saturday came and my lack of sleep really caught up with me.  Going to bed after midnight and waking up at 4 am  several days in a row is not healthy.

For the life of me, I couldn’t make my body work on Saturday.  I told Kyle to go ahead without me, and after an extra few hours of snoozing, and a stop at Le Bux, I was ready to join the drinking ranks.

The sports were fun, but the cheerleading competition was where the real party was.

Pepperdine was a joke.  They had 3 people.

UC Irvine was a little better, but still failed to get much of a cheer.

UW was at least clever with their song selections of Nirvana and “Under my Umbrella.”

U$C attempted Britney Spears.  It at least appeared to have involved some rehearsing.

Cal had an actual cheer routine.  Not too bad.

Stanford was pathetic.  [WTF?]

And then it was time for UCLA…

Clearly there was a significant amount of prep here.  The number of people involved was triple that of any other school, not to mention the fact that everyone was talented and in sync.  Bruins represent!

There were multiple acts, starting with an actual cheer routine (including girls being tossed in the air).

Then a black swan number.  Interesting?

Then a few dance routines.

It was legit.

The crowd was going wild over it.  And I was on my feet screaming like some kind of crazy Bieber fan.  Turns out the choreography was done by a professional back-up dancer who is also a first year at Anderson.  He was amazing.  Chris Brown has competition.

Anyway.  The night went pretty late, and the weekend concluded with a battle of the bands.

I was SO impressed.  So very impressed.  It was like a real concert.  Who would have figured these MBA kids would be so insanely talented in other areas of their lives!?  There were former collegiate and pro athletes, professional back-up dancers, Broadway singers, and amazing musicians…all around really impressive people.

Kyle and I enjoyed the full moon and the free beer, but not the walk home.  Damn never-ending-palm-tree-street.

At least this time I had some drunk good entertainment.

Sunday was uneventful as compared to the rest of the weekend.  We stopped at Starbucks and Whole Foods before heading home.

I really wanted to hit up several dining spots that were recommended to me in downtown Palo Alto (like Crepevine, Fraiche, Cafe 220, Joya, Loving Hut, etc.) – thanks to everyone who sent me recommendations.  We will definitely have to go back because I am in love with the place.

I made a beast of a salad that took a few different sessions to polish off.  Yes, it was THAT big.

Kale, avocado, roasted potatoes, roasted veggies, farro, grilled tofu, and who knows what else…

I also had roasted red pepper hummus and ciabatta.

I even sucked it up and paid the extra $$ for the local brand.  Haig’s is from San Francisco and the roasted red pepper flavor was creamy and spicy and really good.  Super runny after being in the car for 5 hours, but still a big fat winner.

I’m glad to be home now.  Ready to start the work week?  Not so much.  But I think I’ve had enough beer for a while.