A quick trip to San Francisco

The penultimate stop in our vacation-of-1000-cuts was a longish weekend in San Francisco. We're back in town for about 18 hours, no kidding, and then off on our next leg.

We had been toying with the idea of going down to San Francisco for, well, a few years, and had never gotten around to it. The catalyst for our finally deciding to go was that a friend of mine from The WELL had decided to hold an open house to show off his collection of Chicano art; that it was clearly going to be a gathering of several of the people I know from the WELL's Arts conference sealed the deal. Plus, of course, we got to visit San Francisco.

And here is my scruffy little travelogue:

The Lodging

We stayed in the Golden Gate Hotel, on the recommendation of... well, someone, I can't remember. But it was an excellent recommendation. The hotel is centrally located in the downtown area, a few blocks from the Powell BART stop (particularly convenient since BART now goes all the way to SFO), and half a block from a cable car stop.

The Golden Gate Hotel is a wonderful, charming place, with a couple of very friendly innkeepers, and at least two house pets: Captain Nemo, un chat noir, and Humphrey, a very sweet golden retriever. I say at least because there was one other dog we saw there one morning, but I'm not sure it was a permanent resident. Anyway, this was a great place to stay; we'd definitely stay there again.

BART

Coming from Seattle, we were delighted to get to ride a real transit system. And ride it we did. Aside from a few picky design critiques (which I'll write about later), it was a great experience.

Murals

Maybe I just missed the bulletin, but I had never really heard about all of the public murals in San Francisco. I was impressed with them -- from WPA to historic reconstruction, they were all fascinating.

It struck me that most of the people in the WPA-era murals looked morose. Miz Becky pointed out, of course, that it was the great depression, after all.

We visited some in a building on the edge of Golden Gate Park, in the Coit Tower, in Rincon Center, and in Grace Cathedral. I'm sure there are more.

This and that

Here are some other random photos from the weekend.

Dining

Oh yes, how could I forget food? We had several great meals:

Our first afternoon there, we headed into Chinatown to get some lunch. We followed my nose into King Tin, where we had mighty fine barbecued pork and duck and a very tasty chow mein with Chinese greens.

The next night, we and Chris did the same thing, ending up at Le Zinc in Noe Valley. Great French Bistro food; I had a very tasty cassoulet that would have easily fed two people, which forced me to strategically eat just the tasty meaty bits (sausage, duck confit, pork confit, etc.) and forgo the delicious white beans they were lying on. Becky and Chris had... uh... something else tasty.

The next day we had lunch at Yank Sing in Rincon center. We get some good dim sum here in Seattle, and we've had some excellent dim sum in Vancouver, BC; but this topped it all. So tasty and delicate and beautiful... mmmm. And their chili sauce was so good I had to bring home a jar in case I couldn't find it here.

That night, we made a pilgrimage out to Albany to visit Nizza la Bella, owned by the wonderful Evelyne Slomon -- a fellow WELL denizen. Another meal of excellent French bistro food in a beautiful space. The frites -- french fries -- are amazing. How does one make french fries taste better? I have no idea, but they manage. Everything we ate there was at the same level... mighty good food.