[19 August, Tanju] We arrived at Nuri’s house in Sausalito around 9:30 pm. Nuri’s valet parking service, Selin’s warm embraces at the door, and Janna’s sumptuous dinner table made us forget our tiredness.
We could not get up as early as we had been doing probably because we felt too much at home. We started by visiting the UC Berkeley campus and its neighborhood. Our purpose was to show kids, particularly Ali, that there are universities other than MIT. Then we headed to a Turkish kebab place in Santa Clara to meet friends from the Silicon Valley area. Mustafa, Levent, and Filiz could make it. During lunch we reminisced about the old days, talked about children who are in college or on their way to college.
After lunch, we went to the Stanford campus bookstore. We also managed to give the kids an idea about the campus even if it was just a driving tour. A pleasant surprise was a call from Eren, Mustafa’s son, who was doing a summer internship at the medical school there. Due to lack of time, we could not take his offer of a tour of the facilities.
We wanted to see a few sights in downtown San Francisco before the evening rush hour set in. We saw the Coit Tower, Lombard Street, and the Chinatown. Once the evening traffic started, we headed back to Sausalito. On the way, we stopped at the vista point on the ocean side. We experienced the coldest weather of the trip (no surprise there given that we were in San Francisco).
We met Aleks for dinner and then watched Besiktas-Arsenal game on tape and went to bed.