Blogging From the Home of Blogger

Note: I started this post while in San Francisco 01/05/08).

As soon as we got off the plane in Oakland I felt at home as a giant Symantec billboard-ad was hocking virus protection. The worst part about our Skybus flight out was the fight for seating. It wasn't really a big deal in the end Traci and I sat together, but there was some pressure to make sure Traci got an isle seat during the ~ four hour flight. After a 20 minute BART ride into San Francisco we arrived at the Powell Street station, walked past Union Square and checked in to the Chancellor Hotel (Great location, nice, old school hotel, right next to Sears Fine Dinning).

On our first afternoon in the City we walked. That's one of my favorite aspects of cities is just walking around and getting to know the different neighborhoods. We walked around the shops at Union square and slowly made our way through China town, through North Beach, stopping for a gelato near washington park (gelato was good, but nothing like the stuff in Florence).

We arrived at Pier 39 just in time to watch some street performers, listen to the sea-lions and take a few pictures of Alcatraz as the sun faded away. On our way back we stopped at a little Italian place for dinner where I chipped my tooth on some crusty bread (maybe it's time for a veneer?). That's right, now I live up to every ones expectation of a native Ohio-an. On our second day we finished off some more touristy stuff by riding the cable car down to Golden Gate Park and stopped at a place that apparently brought "Irish Coffee" to the States or something like that.

The other big thing that happened was "the storm of the century" as some of the local news have dubbed it. Essentially many of the bridges were closed as trucks were blown over due to 70mph winds. The reason we made the trip to the left-coast was for Brian Blake's wedding. He's getting married in Pleasenton CA in Alameda County, which is full of smaller Wineries. While the weather kinda shut down a bunch of the wine tasting options Traci and I visited Mitchell Katz Winery with a bunch of her relatives and picked up a couple of souvenirs. The wedding is tonight and we return tomorrow morning... Let's go bucks.