I was finally awarded with SAS EuroBonus gold card last Friday. I should have it a month earlier, as SAS has fumbled with my frequent flyer points several times during this summer. I’m still waiting for points from a leg that I flied early July.
If I would have had this status when I returned from the States one week ago, I could have been upgraded to the business class — instead of just having a guaranteed seat. Such small tragedies of life!
Sony Style is the flagship store for Sony products. Stanford Shopping Center has a smallish Sony Style store near Neiman Marcus department store. The store sells the whole range of Sony gadgets, including (but not limited to) laptops, walkmans, TVs, DVD players, headphones and monitors.
The items are of high quality, as usual with Sony. This is also reflected in the pricetag. Be aware that Sony has traditionally followed its own paths with ports and other interoperability features. You may end up being vendor-locked to them. The positive flipside is that Sony’s gadgets work very well together.
The shopping center is on El Camino Real, near University Avenue.
www.sonystyle.com, 359 Stanford Shopping Center, Palo Alto, CA, USA, +1 650 322 6170
Santana Row is newly developed shopping and dining area in San Jose. It is claimed to be an European styled district with a lot of cafés, restaurants, boutiques and decent pavements to walk on.
In some sense, the place has gained sort of poshy European appeal. On the other hand, the district is mere one street with three blocks of stores, so the European style vanishes fast when you go beyond those blocks. You see a lot of parking lots and small buildings.
The stores and restaurants themselves are really worth of visits. There are several top-notch stores, such as Gucci and Burberry, but you can find also mid-priced shops.
Located directly across the street from the Westfield Valley Fair. The Winchester Mystery House is also located nearby.
www.santanarow.com, 400 S Winchester Boulevard, San Jose, CA, USA, +1 408 551 4600
Phillips Gallery of Fine Art is, as name implies, an art gallery specialising to contemporary American arts. The gallery is located on Santana Row area, next to Gucci and Burberry stores, so prepare for hefty pricetags.
The gallery has a good collection of paintings from various artists. Most of the works are oil paintings, but other techniques are used, too. They stock surprisingly many sculptures. The collection of glass sculptures is also spectacular. Their homepage has a lot of images of the artwork.
www.phillipsgalleries.com, 333 Santana Row, San Jose, CA, USA, +1 408 246 8020
Yesterday evening, when fooling around with the site, I made an unpleasant discovery: the feeds were not working correctly. You can probably imagine my horror, as I tried to follow the RSS link at the bottom of the journal page and got nothing.
After checking out that PHP code is really working, I noticed that WordPress sends out 304 status code (not modified) even for those browsers that haven’t requested anything yet.
This discovery led to WordPress bug database that had a ticket related to this problem. Somebody had fortunately solved the problem and there was a diff file.
Unfortunately either the diff or the patched file was broken or not in sync, and I had to apply the patch by hand. The feeds seem to be working properly now, but if you have any issues, please get in touch with me.
Camper is a Spanish brand that sells very positive looking shoes. You just cannot be unhappy while having Camper shoes on — unless they are of wrong size.
The Camper store is located near the middle of Santana Row area. The smallish shop provides the whole selection of Camper shoes. The shoes are laid out in a table in the middle and thus the cramped feeling of cheaper shoestores is avoided.
The shoes are not the cheapest, but you pay for quality and Spanish design.
www.camper.com, 333 Santana Row, San Jose, CA, USA, +1 408 246 4481
Santana Row is an excellent area to get rid of your money and exceed all credit card limits. Gucci is one of the excellent choices for limitless spending opportunities.
The Gucci shop on Santana Row is very airy and the staff is extremely helpful and attentive, as they should be in stores with such pricetags. As usual with these stores, the ratio between the number of garments and square feets is rather small.
You either like Gucci style or then you hate it. Hopefully your taste matches with the limits of your wallet. Otherwise, try to avoid temptations of the store.
www.gucci.com, 333 Santana Row, San Jose, CA, USA, +1 408 557 9926
Crate & Barrel is a good place to buy mid-priced furniture and small items to your home. The stuff is not top-notch design, but they are not made from the cardboard, either.
If you are travelling, you may not be able to buy a sofa and squeeze it to your suitcase, but the store is still worth a visit. The selection of vases and other smaller items is almost exhaustive and the prices are not bad.
Crate & Barrel stocks also Marimekko fabrics, so if you are fancy of Finnish design, go and check their offerings.
www.crateandbarrel.com, 301 Santana Row, San Jose, CA, USA, +1 408 247 0600