Vacation

Mary and I are in San Francisco on vacation, and we're having an absolutely wonderful time. We're staying at the Hotel Palomar near Union Square. I highly recommend this hotel — very comfortable and very good service. The hotel bar is pretty cool, too — it's like having cocktails in your rich artsy friend's living room.

We arrived on Saturday. On Sunday, Mary and I took a trolley tour of the city, and we took a few pictures. That night we had dinner at Night Monkey, a wonderful little neighborhood restaurant with a very eclectic menu. Mary had the buffalo, and I had the venison; both were excellent.

Monday we spent the day touring the Napa Valley. Pictures are here. We visited five of the smaller, private wineries, and had a great time. We arranged the tour with Wine Country Safari, and our driver and guide Bruce was fantastic. He was extremely knowledgable and clearly loves all things wine. By avoiding the large commercial wineries, we got to taste some really extraordinary wines. If you want to tour Napa or Sonoma, Wine Country Safari is definitely the way to go.

Yesterday we had lunch at Swan Oyster Depot. Mary described it as the Soup Nazi doing seafood, and she was right. One lunch counter seating about 20, and the line forms outside. This is not a place where you linger over your meal. We had about a 5 minute wait (and that was at 11:30am), but it was worth it. Good chowder, and very good crab.