No uber in Vancouver so I'm not up on the uber shtick.

Also, wouldn't I be surpressing all uber drivers everywhere and helping the corporate dictator keep the lowly uber peons down if i downloaded the app? I sure would hate to do that. *eyeroll*

99,

The unfortunate side effect is you end up on the same side as pwn.

Had a long nap and didn't wake up until 8:30 or so. We left hotel at 9:00pm, with no reservation or destination in mind, and walked up Mission Street until we stumbled across Salt House:



Looked alright so went inside and got a table, looked to be about the only one available and it was in a nice location in the middle of the room so luck was going our way. Had a mixed lettuce salad with a very nice, delicate vinegarette dressing to start. Oh, and an Alcatraz Ale because Alcatraz tomorrow morning — bit hoppy and def. okay. Ordered some salmon and it was cooked pretty much perfectly:



ESC:



No dessert but did take a leak at a black urinal... WTF is up with that?

take fly repellent to alcatraz. they are everywhere and adept to dodging waving hands.

also, it is an incredibly boring tour.

LOL, ain't no flies on Alcatraz... at least not today, too damn windy.

Started the day with a bit of breakfast at the hotel:



Then went and stood in line in the wind for a frigid crossing over to the Rock:



Damn it was cold out on the deck. The tour was great, very interesting and informative. Lol at Thinman. Obligatory cell pic:



****ing freezing in the wind:



Here is a photo of the photo they take prior to boarding the boat that they try to sell to you afterward for $20. Hah. Risked being shipped back to Alcatraz for real by snapping this pic of the pic:



After getting of the Rock, my wife wanted to go over to Pacific Heights because, shopping. So we took a cab over to Fillmore Street:



Ugh. I did the supportive thing though, but first had some grilled avocado, chicken wrap and Avenue 1500 (?) beer at some average joint (Jane?) on Fillmore.



After sitting and waiting in shops here and there we climbed to the top of the Heights for a pic of the Bay:



Afterwhich we walked down the damn hill to whatever that big park is at the base of Washington St. (?)... can't quite remember. Walked around and took a pic of the Rock:



My wife was interested in this park because it is somewhere around there that her swim from Alcatraz on Sunday morning will end at. We went over to where there was an odd little beach with huge concrete bleachers, below the Ghirardelli factory, where we watched some people swimming in the ocean and whom my wife chatted up about the swim as naturally anyone out there swimming is obviously gonna be doing that nutty swim on Sunday.

Then we walked over to Fisherman's Wharf and caught the railcar back to our hotel where we are resting up before going out for some dinner.

Really great day, except for the damn wind... plus perhaps a bit too much walking up and down hills.

my bad, totally forgot how easy it is to impress lolcanadians

99,

If you are planning to go to Golden Gate Park, make sure you go to the Japanese Tea Garden. That and Muir Woods were my favorite "sights" of our trip.

Has anyone been to the new SFMOMA since it reopened? Will be in town in a couple of weeks and I have some time on Friday morning, but it's $25 admission and my flight out is at 1:30PM. I have been anxious to check it out but I may just wait for my next trip when I have more free time.

Got oh so close to GG Park today but didn't partake. Here is today's TR:

Started off with another great breakfast at the hotel. I'm a poached egg kinda guy and Vitale does them right, pretty much perfect, mixed things up though this morning and had them with sausage instead of bacon... damn fine, but no pics.

Took a cab up to Union Square where an Apple Store opening broke out. Yes, somehow we fluked on to the mass hysteria and hype that a new Apple Store opening creates—we were informed by a Man-in-Blue that the line-up for the opening started at 4am and wrapped around the block... all for a store opening where no new products was happening—Steve Jobs and hype lives on! And I must confess that I am an Apple fanboy, however, I am always a late adopter. Pics of new store from outside:



A cop—yes, a mother****ing cop—told us that the sliding glass door weighs 60,000 lbs. and operates on hydraulics. In fact, the cop told us more Apple Store facts... many more, but I can't remember them all... seemed like he was on the Apple payroll.

In any event, the place was amazing.Here's an interior view:



Standard Apple glass-tread stairway:



In fact, the detailing throughout was pretty much impeccable, very impressive.

We then walked down to Chinatown... which was pretty much similar to any Chinatown—at least to me cause Vancouver has a pretty decent Chinatown. SF Chi-town is more extensive; however, Vacouver's Chinatown has an incredible display of bizarro foodstuffs on display on the street, i.e. dried shrimps, squid, octopus, etc. that SF seemed to lack... be that a good thing or bad. You decide.



After wandering around Chi-town for a bit we hopped a cable-car to experience the ultimate San Francisco treat... although I got to say that the ultimate SF treat is definitely pricey at $7 one-way or $20 all-day—we decided to just ride it to the end of the line:



After which we decided to take a cab to the Castro district, which was very exuberant:





... with quite a few interesting shops sprinkled throughout the hood:



We then walked over to Haight/Ashbury, which was a bit of a supposed nirvana for my wife but which turned out to be a bit of a grotty strip of head shops, piercing palaces and pizza places... a huge disappoint in my book:



Saw some nice stereotypical streetscapes of San Franciscan cityscapes of which this is just one:



Although we were at the cusp of Golden Gate Park we ventured no further and decided to take a cab back to the hotel so my wife could rest up for her impending Alcatraz Swim in the morning.

While my wife rested up I hooked up with El Diablo for an introduction—at my request—to a sampling of American whiskeys. We ran through a flight of four bourbons... of which I am a complete noob:


While very satisfying, we were both in agreement that scotch has a bit more to offer.

We ambled on to another bar for a concluding pisco sour, which was very nice and quite satisfying:



After finishing up with an OOT vs O.O.T. not-a-meeting-of-the-minds we parted ways... me to meet up with my wife for a pre-Alcatraz-swim dinner and El D for a pre-date whatever-he-can-squeeze-out-of-it-encounter — hey, he's younger than me and the sky's the limit. *sigh* (hope it went well El D.)

Back at the hotel my wife was finishing up dessert while chatting up gay-Kevin-&-Charles. I joined the conversation, had my double-IPA-whatever-the-hell-that-is-on-tap plus roast chicken dinner... which was pretty damn good.

Now I'm signing off until my ****ing 5am wake-up call when I'll be doing the right thing in accompanying my wife down to the SF waterfront so she can do some god-forsaken early morning swim from Alcatraz to the mainland. *sigh* Why can't my wife do the normal **** thing and just enjoy good food and drink?!?!?! *argh*

Nice TR, 99.

Did you go to Hardwater with El D? That place is impressive but their prices are a little inflated imo. Also, those are definitely not pisco sours.

I do believe it was Hard Water. Nice place.

Gotta get El D to confirm/correct on the pisco sour. Perhaps this was a SF non-foamy type...

My wife did her Alcatraz swim early this morning and finished in the top 15 or so, at least that's my guesstimate. Took her about 45 minutes. Beautiful, calm morning for a quick dip in San Fran Bay... if you are into that sort of thing, which I'm not.

Here's a pic of her finishing up the swim. She's in the water, wearing a red cap, pretty much in the centre of the pic up above the guy with the red cap on the shore. Pretty sweet Golden Gate to Alcatraz panorama, if I do say so myself.

ET,

Yeah, hard water. And that was a "smoking barrel" whisky cocktail from the not pisco sour variations section of the Peruvian restaurant (la mar, after bailing on my original plan of barca gintonic at coqueta - too crowded) cocktail menu.

I really enjoyed the Smoking Barrel so maybe a crowded Coqueta was a good thing.

Oh yeah, just to keep the TR up to date, on Friday night we went for dinner at the Slanted Door for some very good Vietnamese. Kind of a low lighting atmosphere so I didn't take any food pics.

We had some do-it-yourself crispy spring roll lettuce wraps to start — kinda messy tho, I woulda prefered them to complete the prep instead of having us do it. My wife wanted veggies so we had a spinach dish and also an asparagus one.

I wanted meat obv. so we added a delicious chicken stirfry with nuts and dried fruit. Had bonus meat when a waiter dropped off a clay pot chicken dish in advance of the chicken dish I had ordered. We had started eating it cause hey, we didn't know what our dish looked like. A couple minutes later the waiter came by to advise us of his goof and to also say for us to enjoy our complimentary dish. Nice.

We were stuffed so no room for dessert. They do some sort of cotton candy thing that looks interesting, but I would never order something like that anyway.

After drinks with El D last night I went back to the hotel where my wife was finishing up her pre-swim pasta carb-load dinner. I had a very tasty roast chicken dinner and a double-IPA to prepare me for the impending 5am wake-up call.

99,

Fun fact: slanted door is the second highest grossing restaurant in California and like top 20 in the nation. That place mints money.

It's somewhat overrated IMO, but very tasty. Claypot chicken is awesome, nice luck out there. That and the shaking beef are my two favorite dishes.

It's also the only restaurant I've gotten in a shouting match with staff and been threatened to be kicked out. That was years ago after a lol terribad service dinner with 2p2ers clarkmeister and sucker!

Was at Hard Water for a couple hours on Friday evening. Great place.

Agree that Slanted Door is overrated. It's still very good but I pretty much only go there for work related events when I don't have to pay

Had a very very lazy day after not-my-Alcatraz-swim this morning.

After returning to the hotel my wife slept for a few hours and we didn't wind up leaving the hotel until around 3pm. We decided to just stroll down Embarcadero again to experience it on tourist-Sunday-steroids. Wandered through the Ferry Building, had a very tasty empanada, then watched some break-dancing street performers for a bit.

Decided to go see the sea lions up close cause the other day we were way across from them to the south. This time we had a primo view:



Probably watched them loll about and squawk for half an hour:



Continuing with the hyper-tourist theme we carried on down to Alioto's:



... for some clam-chowder-in-a-bread-bowl and crab sandwiches:





Was kinda surprised that the crab was served on garlic sourdough as the garlic overpowers the crab imo. *hmmmph* Oh well, it's not exactly a fine dining experience... guess they haven't worked out the flavour match-ups yet.

Back to the hotel for more laying about.. Probably gonna take it easy tonight.

Burger fans,

Kronnerburger in Oakland is really ****ing good.

Lots of pics on yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/kronnerburger-oakland-3

Had fries w/ beef cheek+shank gravy & cheese curds (aka poutine) which was A+. Then kronnerburger (served very rare by default), one of the best tasting burgers I've ever had. Had some regular fries to go with that - excellent.

They had a dessert special buttermilk soft serve ice cream w/ strawberries. Holy **** that was great too. Excellent beer selection and cocktails too.

pvn,

That really only gives you an hour or so. I'd recommend visiting when you have ~3 hours to spend.

Okay, gotta close out the SF TR. After heading back to the hotel after a bit of a walkabout Sunday afternoon we went back to the hotel and slept from 6pm until midnight. Yikes! But still felt tired so we just went back to sleep. Olds.

Woke up at 6:30, lazed about for a bit then had breakfast once again at the hotel. We had originally booked for a late 3pm checkout but the hotel screwed up so we had to be out by noon. Decided to just pack up, leave our bags at the hotel and finish up with the classic San Francisco treat — yes, cable cars! We had already ridden one the other day but decided to purchase the all-day pass and ride around and hop-off for shopping stops by my wife. We made our way past the Ferry Building over to the Embarcadero-ish start-off point:



... and took the line up California where we got off and hiked 7 blocks over the hill to Fillmore where my wife had seen something the other day that she now wanted to pick up. Why women can't figure out this kind of thing the first time around will never cease to amaze me. We ate at the Grove, a salad-ish health food place, the type of place my wife loves. I thought I would be okay ordering a hotdog but it was pretty average at best — shoulda known that a salad place isn't gonna do a hot dog any justice:



Then instead of hiking back over the hill to the cable car stop we took a lol-transit bus over... kinda eye-opening! Back onto the cable car where we then transferred to the one that goes crosstown on Powell(?):



Lots of steep hills and even a few corners... kinda cool! We jumped offf at Lombard just to look down the steady stream of cars shwooshing the switchback:



Then back on a cable car and down to Fisherman's Wharf where we thought we could just stay on and ride back... but no... everyone off and over to the sick line-up of what had to be a two hour wait. GTFO with that so we hopped a railcar back to our hotel. Debated about hopping onto another cable car at the start of the line but opted instead to head over to the hotel for some snacks, beer and relaxation:



... before catching the BART to the airport:



Caught our flight home relatively trouble free. Bringing the cold hard reality that we had left the good life in San Fran behind was the contrast in food on the plane with their "Tapas" offering:



Plenty of packaging, no panache.

It should be pretty apparent from this TR that we decided to wing-it this trip planning-wise. Good intentions turned to some "what-ifs" that were dependent on how my wife felt leading up to and after her Alcatraz swim, so we decided to just take things as they came — and as far as we are concerned it all turned out very well. Would repeat.

99,

Damn, sounds like you guys really dug those cable cars!

I read the past couple of pages and didn't see a recommendation for best burrito/taco. I'm staying in Union Square, but don't really care about location, as I'll U/L around town. I'm more than willing to try multiple places. I've spent too much time, in SoCal, PHX, and TX listening to idiots argue about who has the best burritos/tacos, to not get a decent sampling from S.F. and be able to stand firm in my argument about what is best.

http://sfist.com/2015/03/11/the_12_b...an_francis.php

Head down to the Mission and try some of these. La Tacqueria is a classic.

Tx,

That list is solid.

Excellent: La taqueria, taqueria San Francisco (listed in honorable mention), el farolito

Excellent, but nonstandard "fusion" tacos/burritos: hrd (Korean), senior sisig (Filipino)

Excellent not on the list: el metate (esp seafood stuff)

Solid: Espiga de oro, cancun, papalote

Not worth going: little chihuahua, Pancho villa, coyotes

Haven't been: tacos club, castellito

Thanks v.much for this, I am in SF for a few days and had an afternoon to spare today so went to check this place out - really good burger, definitely would recommend.