It's mid-week and about time to kick off a solid 6 days of vacation! Scottie and packed it up and set off for the airport on an overcast and rainy day in Detroit...and subsequently Chicago. We parked, unloaded our luggage, and kissed each other good-bye as he headed to Portland (via Chicago) for a bachelor party weekend and I headed to San Francisco (directly) to meet up with my girls from St. Louis.
While I was safely about the rain showers and clouds cheering on the
US Men's Soccer Team in their 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup semifinal match-up against Spain. It was such an odd experience to be 10,000s of feet about ground watching ESPN, but you could tell that the entire plane was watching the same thing as we cheered on the
US victory. Meanwhile, I find out later that Scottie is stuck in Detroit, then stuck in Chicago trying to get himself routed and re-routed to Providence due rain delays and cancellations. It was not a fun kick-off to his boys weekend.
I landed in San Francisco around lunch time, however, it was more like mid-day snack Detroit time, so thankfully, Lydia whisked me from the airport to a taquería, Dos Pinas, near where she works. It was heaven in a burrito not only because I probably would have eaten a
Coney at that point, but because the food was fresh, healthy (I was enthralled with all the recycling and natural labels everywhere in San Francisco!), and spicy. I
ordered the "AVOCADO, LETTUCE, BEANS, RICE, CHEESE" burrito and housed it.
From there, we took a road trip along the infamous coastal views of Highway 1 to Half Moon Bay.
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While in theory this was a fantastic idea and a perfect introduction to California for me, the fog came in and never really left. I would later discover that this San Francisco fog can be quite detrimental to a scenic vacation. Grrr. As you can see below, this is about as good of a view as I could get of the Pacific Ocean!
Luckily, Lydia is well-versed in the San Francisco weather patterns quickly recognizing that we should just backtrack for her option #2 - Berkeley! She strategically re-routed us through a hilly and somewhat picturesque path.
After about an hour and half or so in the car on top of the plane ride, I was actually ready for a little walking around as we strolled a little through the
UC Berkeley campus finding the MBA buildings for Lydia. We also ventured in and out of some of the cute shops nearby (very
Ann Arbor-esque) before I was running on empty. Of course, I had to be difficult and request that we search for a unique coffee shop or something more California-style rather than your typical
Starbucks and
Peet's that we saw all-around. This proved far more challenging than I thought, but we stumbled across
Tully's and it was quite the success! A decent cup of coffee and much need re-energizer!
On the way home, we drove across the
Bay Bridge and Lydia took me up and down a few San Francisco-style hills! During the evening, we headed a little early for dinner so we ducked in to a bar,
Jovino?, for a drink. I ordered up my first microbrewed beer of the trip, a
Pyramid Hefeweizen, which quenched my thirst after a long day of travel and sight-seeing! For dinner, I was in for a treat as Lydia chose wisely with the sushi (we knew the other girls weren't going to be into it as much as us!) at Unami. Lydia recommended that I take a peak at their sensational drink menu so I recall asking the waitress to just pick something she thought I might like, and she did a fantastic job. We ended up ordering some edamame to start and munched our way through some of these rolls: Spider, Buttercup, Shogun, and Suppai. Or something like that. All were fantastic enough to cash me in for the first night! Cheers!
See the rest of my pictures from Day 1 in the my Picasa Album.
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