{"id":1461,"date":"2011-09-23T19:22:19","date_gmt":"2011-09-23T09:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/?p=1461"},"modified":"2012-02-01T22:51:50","modified_gmt":"2012-02-01T12:51:50","slug":"milpitas-2011-great-mall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/?p=1461","title":{"rendered":"Milpitas 2011 – Great Mall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mil-what?
\nMilpitas<\/strong> is probably an unlikely stop for most travellers with it being over shadowed by San Jose<\/strong> in the south or Oakland<\/strong> in the north for stops on the way to San Francisco<\/strong> but when there’s a place called the “Great Mall<\/a>” we couldn’t resist taking an overnight detour.<\/p>\n

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Milpitas<\/p><\/div>\n

We took the 120 out of Yosemite to the 205 then the 680 which pretty much dropped us right at our hotel, The Marriot TownePlace Suites<\/a>, which we strategically planned due to it being directly across the road from the Mall.<\/p>\n

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The day started off with a free continental style breakfast which for me included a portioned cup of the now extinct in AU, Corn Pops<\/a>. Memories of eating them for dinner at uni came flooding back and it was a sign it was going to be a good day (:<\/p>\n

Getting to the centre within the first hour of opening on a weekend day is definitely the way to go. No problems with getting a covered park right near an entrance and it’s a casual stroll for a good hour or two before the crowds start rolling in. It opens from 10am Mon-Sat. so you even get a nice little sleep in.<\/p>\n

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So to the shopping… with over 200 stores I guess it can lay claim to the “Great”ness but where to start? Since there were so many stores I’m going to refer back to the mall directory to help me remember them all and list them alphabetically.<\/p>\n

The Nike factory store<\/strong> is a good place to start, big variety and I must say we bought more here than at Citadel<\/a>. Cortez’s = $35USD, girls Airmax 90 = $30USD, Omar Salazar SB’s = $35USD *yoink* plus an array of apparel and tee’s at throw away multi-buy prices.<\/p>\n

Reebok<\/strong> also has an outlet store and then there are the usual mall suspects, Champs, Converse, Finish Line, Journeys, Shiekh Shoes, Sports Authority<\/strong> and Vans<\/strong>. Footlocker<\/strong> gets a special mention as this one seemed to be one of their few clearance stores. Normal fair up front but at the back it was pile after pile of mismatched boxes, pairs and markdown on top of markdown stickers. For the most part there was a reason why most were reduced but there were some diamonds in that rough, biggest problem was finding how much they were. This thankfully paid off when a pair of Punkrose <\/a>Retro Hi-Tops purchased, basically the bastard child of Chuck Taylor<\/strong> and Vans<\/strong>. Going by the reduced tickets and percent off markings, the guesstimation came to about $20 down from $100. Not bad at all right? Not even close, the sales guy stumbled back wide eyed before calling his colleagues over. While we were thinking…”Oh great we’re gonna have to put these back”, he turns the register readout around to show… $2.17 inc tax<\/strong>. What??? He even got the manager to check and sure enough that was the price! Free lunch then (: This further enforces my claim that the internet is not the best place for bargains \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

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$2.17 inc tax!<\/p><\/div>\n

After that, seeing items on sale just wasn’t the same, after all, its no $2.17! But we continued no less. Sanrio <\/strong>and Toys R Us<\/strong> were the only major places for toys though there were a couple places with a limit selection of anime and game related merch. Sears<\/strong> has an appliance outlet store if you’re chasing down some cheap Aldi-esque appliances.<\/p>\n

What mall stop for us would be complete without a Wetzel’s Pretzels<\/strong> stop? Yep, just so happens there is one here too \ud83d\ude09 and it has stolen the torch for best pretzel’s ever. The fresh pretzel bites were a cut and a half (no pun intended!) above all the other stores we’ve tried, deeeelicious.<\/p>\n

All pretzelled and bargained up we waddle out to the car and hit the road once more for our final USA stop, San Francisco!<\/p>\n

Milpitas 2011 – Great Mall<\/a>
\nYosemite 2011 part #1 – LA to Oakhurst via Bakersfield<\/a>
\nYosemite 2011 part #2 – Yosemite National Park<\/a>
\nSan Francisco 2011 part #1 – Arrival<\/a>
\nSan Francisco 2011 part #2 – Shopping – Haight, Downtown SF<\/a>
\nSan Francisco 2011 part #3 – Chinatown<\/a>
\nSan Francisco 2011 part #4 – Japantown<\/a>
\nSan Francisco 2011 part #5 – Alcatraz<\/a>
\nSan Francisco 2011 part #6 – Fisherman’s wharf, Golden Gate Bridge<\/a><\/p>\n

Complete Yosemite 2011 photo gallery here<\/a>
\nComplete San Francisco 2011 photo gallery here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mil-what? Milpitas is probably an unlikely stop for most travellers with it being over shadowed by San Jose in the south or Oakland in the north for stops on the way to San Francisco but when there’s a place called the “Great Mall” we couldn’t resist taking an overnight detour. We took the 120 out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1301,388],"tags":[1006,767,638,1310,1306,1311,619,1304,563,487,655,1307,1303,179,1314,525,1313,1288,1312,990,1293,183,100,1309,1308,391,1305,444,1285],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1461"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1871,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions\/1871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}