One again, it was a beautiful day as we left the Laurel Inn Hotel. The hotel turned out to be a real gem, quite reasonably priced, clean, quiet and the staff friendly.
Our route took us onto the US 101 north heading towards San Francisco. In San Jose, we changed onto the I-880 to go around the eastern side of San Francisco Bay. The traffic through San Jose was very busy, certainly the most traffic we'd seen for a couple of weeks.
Once we got to San Leandro, about 30 miles north of San Jose, we easily found Marina Boulevard and drove down to San Leandro Marina and the Marina Inn. This is a very attractive looking hotel perched on the edge of the marina which is full of boats and yachts. Although it was still before 12, we managed to check-in and got a room overlooking the marina. In the distance we could see planes landing at Oakland Airport, but during our stay they really didn't disturb us at all.
Co-located with the hotel were two restaurants, Horatios an up-market dining experience serving steaks and ribs etc and El Toritos, a Mexican restaurant. We chose the El Toritos and enjoyed a very pleasant lunch.
During the afternoon, I went for a swim in the pool and lazed in the hot tub!
We left the hotel at 5-0-clock and rejoined the I-880 for the journey down to San Jose where we had booked to see Peter Gabriel in concert. We left early as we thought the traffic would be horrendous, but because we were able to the 'car-pool' lane on the outside lane of the Interstate, we whizzed down the outside of all the rest of the jammed up traffic.
We were able to park easily, although it cost $20, right next to the entrance to the HP Pavillion stadium and went to pick up our tickets from the 'will call' window of the box-office. We had to wait about another 45 minures before the doors opened, but spent the time reading.
The concert was excellent (well I thought it was) with the same band members as the original tour in 1986, and it finished at 2300. We quickly got going, joined the I-880 north again and were back at the hotel by midnight.
Hotel - Marina Inn
Weather - Clear skies and sunny. Slowly warmed up all day to reach 90s mid afternoon
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