The Taylor Woodrow Grand Prix held this week-end was one of the biggest events ever organized in San Jose. It would have been a shame to miss it, so we bought two tickets and went there on Saturday. Apparently, everyone else thought the same as there were 50 000 people in downtown San Jose on Saturday only and 150 000 total over the week-end. All the roads around the track were blocked so we took the lightrail VTA to get there. The main race is on Sunday and is a world championship race so we saw the smaller races on Saturday.It was incredible to see cars going that fast on city streets and also super noisy, but we were prepared and brought our earplugs . One disapointment was that even though our tickets showed seat numbers, we didn’t get any seats. You had to buy the “Grand Stand” tickets to get seats! It was a big rip-off but since it was so hot that day, it was actually better to walk around to look for the shady spots. There were car exhibitions all over and concerts. Later in the day was the election of Miss San Jose Grand Prix. Overall, it was a fun event and it felt like San Jose is actually a big city. By the way, I’ve read it has recently replaced Detroit as the 10th largest city in the US.

We went to Monterey Bay Aquarium last Saturday, about an hour and half south from San Jose. After struggling to find a parking spot(we didn’t know it was such a touristic area) and waiting in line for an additional hour, we finally entered the aquarium. It didn’t look that big from outside but once inside we found plenty of things to see and admire! There were lots of variety of fish and other sea creatures. The aquarium is divided into two levels with some aquariums taking the entire two level height. We saw corals, rock fishes, jelly fishes, sea nettles and even sharks! There is one large aquarium that has yellowfin tuna. They were absolutely amazing!! The yellowfin tunas that we saw were so big and round; some of them were about six foot long. Sometimes, they would swim really close to the glass that we were able to examine their skin texture! Too bad it was too dark for us to take pictures of the giant yellowfin tuna. However, we got plenty of good pictures of the other sea animals. We thought it was an awesome aquarium, and a must-see for anyone in the Bay area.

This week-end, we drove to Southern California and took our nephew and niece to Newport Beach. They were very happy!

We took advantage of the 4th of July car sale to buy Minh Chau a new car. We finally decided on a Honda Accord EX. It is a really good car for the price and the 2005 model is actually quite stylish! It has 16 inch alloy wheels, sunroof, 6-CD changer, 6 speakers … We took it for a first drive on Pacific Coast Highway and it handled the steep and narrow curves beautifully!