a sunny day in Oakland.

It's summer so we are doin' all we can to escape our foggy city and catch some sun rays.

Saturday we went to Oakland. First stop...the temple! Holy moly, that place is seriously the best. We both felt so happy and refreshed after a session there. I was a little nervous to go in the temple with bright pink hair, but all I got was smiles and compliments. 

The Oakland temple has quickly become my favorite. There are stairs that lead you to the roof of the temple which has this amazing view above Oakland and San Francisco. 

After the temple we headed downtown to find some food. I am on a pretty restrictive diet these days and eating out is pretty hard. (I will write more about this in another post.) Miles found this little hole in the wall Ethiopian restaurant downtown. It is family owned, cheap, delicious, gluten free, dairy free, huge portions, and super spicy. Basically covered all my needs and more.

Whenever I have heard about Oakland, mostly I just picture the most ghetto place on earth and I am yet to discover that side of Oakland. Every part of Oakland I have experienced is beautiful. We had heard cool things about the Mountain View Cemetery so we made our way up there and it was pretty amazing. I'm weird and I find cemeteries really cool to begin with. 

 There was a portion of the cemetery called, "millionaire row" full of these HUGE graves. We walked along millionaire row and googled each of the names and read their story. My favorite was finding the family that the movie Cheaper By the Dozen was based off of. They were all buried here! Also, Mr Ghirardelli the chocolate man is buried there as well. His tomb was full of Ghirardelli chocolates that people had thrown in there. What a cool dude. 

How handsome is Miles? There is no other person I would rather walk through cemeteries googling dead people with than him. 

Last stop was the Berkley Bowl. The Berkley Bowl is basically the Super Bowl of grocery stores. You can find every fruit or vegetable you could ever need (+ a ton you have never even heard of) all organic, grown at a farm only a couple hours from here. Food has been a major topic on my mind the last 3 months. There is a lot to be said about how messed up the American diet is, but as I was walking around the Berkley Bowl I had this moment of realization and gratitude of how insanely blessed I am to live in a place where I have access to such a huge variety of freshly grown fruits and vegetables. I am so lucky to live in a place where eating gluten and dairy free is a little tricky but not impossible. We were able to find gluten free, dairy free, chocolate chip cookies at the Berkley Bowl! I feel so grateful for this food journey I have been going through and I am grateful to have the means to feed myself healthy food that makes me feel good. Ha, so there is my heartfelt testimony about a grocery store... If you are ever in the East Bay, the Berkley Bowl is actually at the top of my recommendations of places to go. 

They had pink carrots to match my pink hair! And edible flowers in case you have been craving those?...Haha

Then we headed back home into the fog. It was kinda spooky driving across the bay bridge back into the city and only being able to see the bottom half of all the tall buildings. It's a weird place we live. 

Thanks for the sunny day, Oakland!