Northern California Nesties
Otterama
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
What do you love about NorCal?
I'm feeling really blue about moving because I'm going to be so far away from my friends, family and home. I won't know anyone and I'm afraid I'll be very lonely. I don't know anything about the area.
Make me feel better and tell me about all the great things California offers that I can't get in Michigan?
Re: What do you love about NorCal?
I've travelled a lot through the country (and world) and I can tell you there is NOTHING like northern California. Spend 10 minutes here and you will realize how wonderful it is to live here. No matter where I go when I come home I always realize how great I have it living where I do.
Yelp.com is also your friend
In no particular order, I like:
- the proximity to big cities, country side, beach, and mountains, all within a few hours drive,
- the various locations we can go for a quick gateaway, and the different fun activities that each location (ocean, mountain, ect) can provide
- the food diversity and good restaurants,
- the numerous fairs, festivals, and events in the bay area,
- the big list of hiking trails, and the wildflowers along them in the springtime,
- the cultural diversity that allows me to easily find non-American products (for ex, Asian veggies at the Asian grocery stores, French magazines at some bookstores, French cheese in some specific stores, etc)
- and the weather.
Wind chill factor is an unknown phrase around here
Ok, joking aside...the weather is fantastic. It rarely gets unbareably hot and rarely does it get ridiculously cold. Yet, we have trees that change color and you can go skiing with a 3 hour drive north.
Great diversity, highly educated population (though you can't tell it in the stores today!), wide range of areas to live in (mountains, hills, urban, coastal...), every kind of food you can think of, tons of outdoor areas to enjoy, world class City with world class arts & culture, world class universities, center of the tech-world, great people...there is so much here.
But I know it is hard being away from friends and family...sometimes none of that compares when friends & family are far away. With a little time and effort, you'll make great connections here and start to build new friendships.
Good luck withthe move
Lighthouse State Beach, Santa Cruz.
Food and Diversity. Diversity of things to do, places to go, terrain to explore and people to chat with. It is amazing here.
I just discovered there is a Whole Foods and a Teavana shop where I'll be living. Score! As of now, WF is about 3 hours away from me and Teavana is over an hour.
I cannot WAIT to live in a city. And from everything you all have said, California is going to be heaven!
So...what about earthquakes?
That makes me feel better.
I'm a structural engineer in the bay area and I've been working here for 11 years. In that time we've NEVER had to repair a building due to an earthquake. Fire damage? yes. Water damage? yes. Someone tried to run over her boyfriend and drove into a building? yes. Earthquakes? nope.
Diversity, diversity, diversity. In everything. After living away for a while now, that's the thing I miss and appreciate most about NorCal when I'm gone.
And as far as earthquakes... truly, I feel like they're the least scary of all the natural disaster possibilities (and that's coming from someone who was in the middle of Japan's 9.0 earthquake/tsunami horror in March and has experienced literally around 2,000 earthquakes in the past 8 months alone). CA is prepared. An earthquake has to be REALLY big before any damage happens, and luckily those are rare.
Definitely everything mentioned and Gannon covered mostly everything. I just would mention that the mountains are much further from the Bay Area than the beach/ocean. It takes no more than 30 mins to get to the water from pretty much anywhere in the Bay Area, whereas to get to the mtns that's at least 3 hours away. I miss being that distance from Lake Tahoe, which is beautiful. There are lots of hill areas to hike in though. The Bay Area has lots of nice trails in nature areas. One of my favorites is Muir Woods in Marin County. And I love being near the water. Where we lived most of the time I lived in the Bay Area, we were very close to a marina with a beautiful view of the bay. When I lived in Oakland, I loved being near Lake Merritt, too. There are lots of nice independent bookstores and other small shops, too.
The ocean in CA is not generally warm for swimming in though. The water in the Pacific is colder than the Atlantic. Plus it's colder at Bay Area beaches than Southern Calif. beaches, which is what most people think of when they come to California. And they aren't sandy usually, more rocky. It's also cooler outside near the water than even in the same town away from the water. I'm in L.A. now and we have yet to really have fall. I like seasons myself so I don't like that much. If you're used to having a solid summer, fall, winter and spring, the weather will be strange to you in Calif. We don't really get full on seasonal change in the coastal parts of CA. I'm originally from inland CA and they're more pronounced there. It takes a LONG time for fall to show up on the coast and it's often hotter in Sept an even Oct than June.
I miss good public transit, BART and CalTrain. I loved not having to drive into SF to spend time there. You can't get to all parts of the city with BART but to some main parts of it. It's kind of expensive but pretty clean and generally safe. There are great museums in SF, San Jose and Oakland. Since you'll be in the S. Bay, you won't be too far from Monterey and if you like garlic, you'll be near Gilroy. There are lots of nice parks in the S. Bay, too. Food is great in the Bay Area, although it's harder to find good Mexican food than elsewhere in the state. San Jose has good places though. Ethiopian food is big in parts of the Bay Area and is yummy. I miss my favorite ice cream parlors and bakeries. Diversity is a plus throughout the state.
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I'm in the same boat except I'm moving from a completely different part of the country! I just got married on November 13th, and early next year my new husband and I are moving to the Mountain View area where he has been hired as a software engineer for a mobile app company!
I lived in Southern CA as a kid and still have family there. I wish we were going to be closer to that part of the state, but oh well.
We currently live in Orlando, Florida where I am a Walt Disney World castmember. In every other way, I would rather live in CA than FL...but I'm heartbroken at the thought of leaving Disney! (Yes, CA has Disneyland, but we will be a good 6 hours from there.)
One nice thing is that my childhood best friend lives near Sacramento, only a few hours from where we will be moving to.
-- Really good weather, at least compared with Michigan
You won't be dealing with snowstorms (at least not in most of the state), and you'll get amazing days like today -- beginning of December and 70 degrees out!
-- Really great produce, pretty much year round. We are spoiled rotten here with the food we have available.
-- Natural beauty. Of course, every state has some version of this. And maybe I'm not objective, but I've always thought California had an abundance of this. You've got ocean, desert, mountains, and valleys. So much to see and do and admire.
Let us know when you move out here. We'll do a GTG and you can meet some new people
I have made some awesome friends through this board.
The small ones are not a big deal (they'll probably spook you since you're not used to them, but they won't hurt you or your property.) The big ones suck, but they don't happen often. Make yourself an earthquake kit and remember that nature strikes somehow everywhere you live -- hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, earthquakes, thunderstorms, etc. There's only so much we can do about it!
having lived in michigan and having family in michigan ... all i can say is this
CA has snow ONLY if you want to go to it ... no more shoveling driveways
disneyland just got ALOT closer (90 mins via plane)
diversity of people and food .. you can literally eat at a different county each night of the week
depending on where in MI you're coming from IMAX and THX sound are at far more theatres
one thing i do miss about michigan is greektown in detroit .. i haven't been able to find anything comarable in CA (if anyone knows, PLEASE !! let me know)