Magical Mystery Tour

Greetings from the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose.

We started our day off right, after a fortuitous wrong turn led us away from the scary-looking diner down the road and toward the Millbrae Pancake House in all its 1959 glory. Jenn took this pic so that it looks like I'm sitting down to an Orson Wellesian repast, but be reassured that this is breakfast for the two of us. Still a lot of food, but we didn't get to be fat people without working at it. Expect a lot of this blog to center around food...

For instance, the fact that I am constitutionally unable to pass a place with a huge sign outside reading "Juicy Burger" without stopping. Alas, the burger itself didn't live up to the name, but at least I get to post this wholly unappealing picture of myself.

As for the Mystery House itself, it's a tourist trap, albeit an enjoyable one. I don't feel like relating the history here (check the link above if you don't know it), but it's full of wackiness like this Door to Nowhere. We're now virtually experts on the place - having arrived coincidentally on Friday the 13th (13 being the spiritually-minded Sarah Winchester's favorite number), we opted to sign up for one of the late-night flashlight tours, but wanting to actually see the house, we went earlier for the tour proper. Unfortunately, other than the lighting change, both tours were virtually identical. And left us with lots of time to kill, during which we roved the not-particularly-interesting streets of San Jose.

Jenn insists we mention that part of that (a mercifully short part) was spent across the street from the Winchester, at one of those upscale outdoor mall areas that are springing up more and more, a maddeningly antiseptic artificially created hotspot for people with too much money and not enough imagination. These places always annoy the hell out of us; closed-off streets thronged with well-dressed types not nearly cranky enough to realize how phony it all is. The homogenization of the country marches on, one Gucci store and faux art gallery at a time.

Today, back to the Millbrae Pancake House for another gluttonous breakfast, then our first venture into San Fran proper. Just general wandering and exploring planned. Hopefully we don't end up trapped in some Escher-esque staircase: