Lunch at Casa Machado

Biplanes and Pollo Asado = Heaven

Annika had a huge day. After a morning visit to the Zoo to celebrate our awesome weather (78* in January - neener neener), we had lunch at a place I've been wanting to get her to for quite some time - Casa Machado.  This is a great little Mexican place butted right up against Montgomery Field.  In fact, the restaurant is literally right above the "passenger terminal", such as it is, for the tiny airfield.  The interior is filled with flying model aircraft of every era, but the main feature is the massive bank of windows that face directly to the runways.  Every landing and take off is visible right from your table.

Take Off!

Since the restaurant is directly over the "terminal", this also had the rather awesome side-effect that we had a series of biplane flights that would taxi right up to the strip beneath the restaurant windows to load passengers for their short adventure flights.  I couldn't have planned it better.  Between this and the normal airport traffic (plenty of arrivals and departures, a couple of planes running touch-and-gos, one jet departure and a helicopter flyby), Annika was in heaven!

This was more than a little nostalgic for me as well, as I can remember eating here with my own Father and sisters when I was only a few years older than Annika is now.  Fortunately Annika seemed to enjoy all the noise just as much as I always did - though I'm sorry the restaurant's excellent windows hid the sound of the massive radial engines on the biplanes.  After lunch, she spent a long time gazing though the fence before we finally dragged her away for a much needed nap.  Like I said, it was a huge day, but she made us pay in the evening!  The nap was too short and dinner was one cranky disaster...  Oh well. :)