[turnipmonster]

this weekend I took the wife to SF this weekend for a surprise birthday present. I have to say that SFO is one of the most convenient airports I've been to as far as getting from the terminal to the city with minimal hassle/time. My saying this may be colored by the fact jetblue flies into the international terminal, so all you have to do is hop on BART and boom, you're in SF in no time. much easier than JFK, LGA, EWR etc.

We stayed at the Sir Francis Drake hotel on powell near Union Square. for the price range, this hotel was a pretty great deal. right around 120/night, it has a lot of character and our room was small but nice (and newly renovated). Also, the bar upstairs (harry denton's starlight room) is a great place for a before dinner cocktail.

as soon as we checked in we walked down to the mission to check out the legendary el farolito. both of us got the super burrito and an agua fresca. my pineapple agua fresca was great, my wife had strawberry which was good but not great. The burritos were truly excellent, and had sliced avocados instead of guacamole. I ate mine and felt like I was going to die afterwards, my wife couldn't come close to finishing hers and still felt like she was going to die.

we then walked over to guerrero and walked up to alamo park, where we checked out the houses and sat on the grass. after this, walked back to the hotel and had a pre-dinner drink at the hotel's bar. I had an uptown manhattan which was good but a little too sweet for me, wife had a margarita which was great.

dinner was at the slanted door in the ferry building, so we walked down market to the ferry building. walking everywhere was a very common theme to our trip, we only took muni twice [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. the slanted door was packed but we got a table quickly, and started with the imperial spring rolls and grilled squash fritter thing I am forgetting the name of. the imperial rolls were just ok, squash was amazing. shared a bottle of riesling off their gigantic-list-of-rieslings, and for dinner we split the vegetarian glass noodles, spicy japanese eggplant and halibut (3 dishes total). I thought all 3 were excellent, wife wasn't so into the eggplant but thought the glass noodles were amazing. The halibut was really excellent, I don't eat fish all that often but to me it was very light, flaky and had a lot of flavor. no room for dessert, the bill including wine was 107.

the next day we walked over to tartine for breakfast, both of us got egg and cheese on a baguette. we then walked over to haight st and over to golden gate park, and had tea at the japanese tea garden. japanese tea garden was nice, but I enjoyed the rest of the botanic gardens a lot more, particularly the fragrant garden. at this point we hopped on the muni and went to the park on the west side of fisherman's wharf. this was a really nice park, and we walked from here down through the wharf and over to check out the sea lions. only 2 sea lions, kind of dissapointing.

from the wharf we decided to walk down to north beach and visit city lights bookstore. a few hills later, and we stop at molinari's italian deli for lunch and had a GREAT sandwich with roasted peppers, pesto, sundried tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella. then went to city lights (picked up leonard bernstein's "the joy of music", great book!) and had several beers at vesuvio. this is a really great bar, def has an old school sf kind of vibe.

we had dinner at greens with some friends, really great restaurant. started with the corn griddle cakes, and then the vegetable enchiladas with chili beans and creme fraiche. for dessert we split the peach tart with buttermilk ice cream.

saturday we got up at 8, bought a picnic lunch at the farmer's market in preparation for angel island. bread from acme, 3 kinds of cheese from cowgirl creamery, and the most overpriced organic peaches ever (3.75/lb, 2 peaches were 5 bucks!). still, great market and surprisingly packed even that early.

once we got to angel island we decided to rent bikes, and rode the 5 mile loop. after getting back we went to hotel buena vista for irish coffee, and then back to the hotel. after some cocktails we headed to sushi groove south for dinner. this place is awesome and has a great vibe. the sushi was good but not mind blowing, but the great vibe, music and large bottles of asahi more than made up for that.

ok, that's probably long enough, the next day was uneventful as we spent most of it travelling.