Happy Day at Happy Hollow, San Jose

Spring break and nowhere to go…well we would have been in DC with the grandparents but the grandparents had a change of plans so here we are…at home. My sister and I decide to get our kids together and have family time. SF was too far, since my nephew had an orthodontist appointment in the early afternoon. Instead we decide to head south to San Jose to Happy Hollow, the newly renovated, reopened family park. My sister wasn’t too sure her boys would enjoy it, after all they were all of 8 and 6, but they did. Our girls loved it as I knew they would.

Someone we met at the park described the previous condition of the park as ‘aged’. That was being generous. The park was falling apart, looking neglected, with rides unstaffed; generally in disrepair. It wasn’t looking very much like a happy place.

After a year and a half and $70MM later, Happy Hollow actually looks like a happy place. There are bright colored signs, new landscaping, new and refurbished rides, new buildings etc. We all thought it looked wonderful.

We did not pick the best day to go, the lines of cars to get into the park were long and that was at 10:10am; and the park opened at 10am. It was spring break after all. In the parking lot, my older nephew looked around and commented on all the strollers. Happy Hollow is indeed perfect for the stroller set, but older kids still can have a lot of fun (as ours did).

Admission isn’t exactly cheap. First, there is a $10 parking fee (steep!) and admission is $12 for anyone above 2 (unless you are a senior). You might consider getting a membership. A family membership will pay for itself after 2 visits for a family of four.

Highlights? Well, everyone, including me, had a great time on the roller coaster. It’s small but fun and just enough thrill for even a 8 year old boy. Another favorite was the Hopper. This is the kiddie version of a drop tower. Again just enough thrill…put a smile on all the kids’ faces. Happy Hollow also boasted a wonderful playground with an amazing play structure. It was huge with lots of nets, bridges, slides etc…The kids spent a lot of time running around having a blast. My sister and her boys had to leave at 1pm after lunch under a pleasantly shaded picnic table (and there are many of those). We soldiered on until well past 3pm, taking in more rides, the zoo and the farm. We didn’t even have time for the puppet theater.

We had a great day and the girls wanted to come back for another day of fun…so I turned in our tickets towards a family membership. I guess we are not too old yet to hang out with the stroller set.

http://dev.hhpz.org/index.cfm/id/1/Home/

San Jose Tech Museum, Il Fornaio

Sunday was rainy, actually stormy. No birthday parties to entertain our kids. So, my plan was to just laze around the house and endure the kids’ boredom induced whining and bad moods that were sure to occur. However, my husband suggested going to the San Jose Tech Museum. We never usually think of getting our entertainment, culture fix down south; we usually look north to San Francisco. The Tech Museum however made a lot of sense. San Jose is closer than San Francisco for us and the museum is free on second Sundays of the month! Perfect! It just so happened to be the second Sunday.

As soon as we walk into the museum, we notice a lot of activity. There was some sort of Tech Challenge going on downstairs…teams of students attempting to change a battery on a ‘satellite’ with some simple, a few more elaborate homemade contraptions. But the more interesting activity was happening right at the lobby level. There were two teams of high school students, one from Monta Vista and the other from Lynbrook, milling around two rather large robots.

I push the girls toward the high school students. I was more excited than the girls. I figured the girls would be enamored with the high school girls but I think they were a bit overwhelmed. The girls did have fun and enjoyed their chance at controlling the robots. We also got to meet this year’s Intel Science Search second place winner. He was part of the team. I don’t think the girls were impressed…on the other hand, I was. Although I did come away feeling a bit sorry for my girls…the competition is so much more fierce now than when I was a kid. Science competition used to mean a flimsy poster board with explanation on what happens to stale bread…now it requires a working robot that actually does something (in this case a robot that kicks a soccer ball, and a robot that sucks up balls and plops them into garbage cans).

Luckily the rest of the exhibits did not instill too much inferiority complex. We wandered around for another hour or so and decided to break for lunch. The museum does boast a café on the ground floor and looked pleasant enough but it was packed and perusing the tables, french fries seemed to be the dominant food. It did not look appealing to me and again to my surprise, my husband had the second bright idea of the day. He suggested lunch at a nearby restaurant. There are quite a few choices but we decided on Il Fornaio, an Italian chain restaurant in an elegant old hotel, the Sainte Claire.

The hotel is charming and the décor of the restaurant, the large windows and the white jackets of the servers transported you back into the past. The bread was warm, the crust crunchy and our pasta was good. We could have also opted for breakfast fare still being served. I would recommend against ordering from the kids menu. It’s far better to order a regular pasta entrée and split it for the kids. Which is what we ended up doing by default…we ordered the kids menu pasta which our girls refused to eat since they liked the look of their daddy’s pasta better. You never know with kids.

After lunch we went back to the Tech Museum and spent a little more time. It was a great way to spend a stormy Sunday!

http://www.thetech.org/