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November 6, 2006
Weekend By The Bay
 Elaine and I spent a long weekend down in the San Francisco Bay Area, heading out to Napa on Friday afternoon for Marnie's wedding, and then going to the city proper to crash with our friends Kim and Steve.
(Kim knew we were coming, so she hustled out of town to attend her bridal shower in Los Angeles. That meant poor Elaine got a double-dose of me and Steve, with no extra estrogen to temper our juvenile highjinks. Poor girl.)
The usual notes:
- Early-morning flights are kinda brutal. Marnie's wedding was at 3 PM, so we zoomed out of SeaTac at 7:50 AM on Friday. On paper, these pre-9 AM'ers seem OK ("We'll get up at 4! Get coffee! We'll be fine!"), but when you're yawning over and over and over again during a two-hour flight, well, your bod is telling you something.
- The flight to SFO is just two hours - barely a blip, benchmarked against some of my recent trips. I actualy got a little distracted when the captain announced that we were starting our descent ("Huh? Really???").
- Playing Roller Coaster Tycoon at 35,000 feet is a ton 'o fun. It may even be my new John Grisham novel.
- The friendly folks at Dollar Rent-A-Car saddled us with a convertible PT Cruiser. Let me just say this about the 'ol convertible PT - the thing has the worst visibility of any car I have ever driven. Seriously. You have no peripheral vision at all, and turning your head won't help you, because the convertible top manages to blanket out your over-the-shoulder view of the cars, say, next to you. If you buy this car, be aware that it's very, very likely that you're going to hit something when you change a lane.
- (Fortunately, we didn't hit anything. My clever strategy there was to just, you know, drive with the top down all the damn time.)
- I'd never been to Napa before, and was very curious to see what it was all about. Marnie calls it home, as does Schelley, and Richard considers himself a NorCal guy. The fuss, as it turned out, was warranted: beautiful, rolling country, winery after winery after winery. Heck, I thought I saw Paul Giamatti and Thomas Hayden Church at one point.
- Starbucks are everywhere in Napa. If you can believe it, they actually seemed more prevalent than - wait for it - McDonald's. Both Elaine and I were starving after having taken such an early flight, and were looking for decent roadside food on our way along Highway 37. It seemed that every exit featured a Starbucks, surrounded by some dubious fast food joints.
- (We finally found a Thai place. Mmmmmmmm, Thai.)
- The wedding was fabulous. Marnie and Gary booked a winery in Calistoga, which is about 45 minutes from our hotel in Napa. The ceremony and reception were beautiful ... and a lot of fun.
- There are far, far worse things than a 45-minute drive back to your hotel at 10 PM along a winding, moonlit road, with the top down and the wind in your hair.
- Elaine, Steve and I had some killer late brunch on Saturday at The Elite Cafe in San Francisco. Their scones are amazing ... and they have the best homemade(!) ginger ale I've ever tasted.
- I've been to San Francisco dozens of times in the last few years, and for some odd reason the touristy activities - be it Ghirardelli square, taking photos of Alcatraz or the Golden Gate, or just walking Fisherman's Wharf - never get old for me.
- (Of course, I suppose they get really old for poor Kim and Steve, who seem to always be schlepping me around to said touristy activities. Good friends: they make life worth living.)
- We tried to see "Borat" on Saturday night, but it was sold out everywhere. Instead, we saw "Babel" and I reveled in how nice it is to come to a major city, where you can see most everything that's in limited release.
- Despite my hope for the film (the trailer's pretty good), "Babel" wasn't great - it's a moody, cross-cut story about the people whose lives are touched by a shooting in Morocco. I thought it would be much more forceful and dynamic than it actually is, and I felt somewhat let down. I didn't hate it - I just felt like it never really took off. Possible rental.
- If you want to get drinks and watch people flirt, fight, and go on that first date on a Saturday night, The Grove is a great place to do so.
This trip was the next-to-last one for me this year - we're doing some driving around the holidays, but, aside from a business trip later this month, my 2006 travel is all wrapped up. I must say that I'm soooooo ready to not be looking at the inside of an airplane for a while.
Damn, it's good to be home.
Posted by Gavin Shearer at November 6, 2006 6:44 PM. Posted to Travel.
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