Panama Update #102
December 20, 2008
Today I took the BART over to Berkeley at about 1:00 PM. Nikki and I had made plans to meet after her meeting at about 5:30 PM at an Ethiopian restuarant on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. The BART took about 30 minutes from the Civic Center stop near us and cost $3.40. When I arrived I could see a big Farmer's Market down the street from the station, near a park and city hall. They had about 75 booths selling all sorts of different organic foods, prepared and raw. I hadn't eaten lunch yet, and I find a seaweed burrito and some Indian style pancake and ate in the park. After lunch I found a bike rental place and explored around the UC-Berkeley campus and some other parts of the city. There was a huge art fair on Telegraph Ave. that was packed with art booths and people. They had some Hare Krishna group chanting on the sidewalk, which I haven't seen in a long time. They also had booths that were selling radical bumper stickers and all the crazy stuff that you can imagine.
After I returned the bike and walked back over to meet Nikki, there was a UC/UNLV basketball game going on and they let me in for free since it was already the 2nd half. I watched for about an hour since I had some time before meeting Nikki. It was a pretty good game and I think UC won, but I left before it was over. When I met up with Nikki we found out the Ethiopian restaurant was closed, so we did not have a chance to eat that kind of food here. We haven't had good Ethiopian food since we were in Ethiopia a little over a year ago. Nikki found a tea and herb shop that she really liked and bought a bunch of different teas to bring back to Panama.
Tomorrow the shuttle is supposed to pick us up at 6 AM and take us to the Oakland airport and then on to Spokane, weather permitting.
