Outside of passing through the area, stopping in San Francisco was by design so that we could catch up with our friends with Claire and Alex who used to live in Boston. I worked with Claire at TripAdvisor, until just over a year ago, when I talked her over the ledge and convinced her that yes, she and Alex should quit their jobs to travel across the country. Sound familiar? Well, they have been pivotal in helping us figure out where we wanted to go and what we should see, and inspiring us to go through with it, so it was fitting for us, midway through our own trip, to catch up with them and share stories from the road. That, and we have a great time with them and they are super easy-to-be-around people, and if it were up to Claire we’d be living on their couch for the foreseeable future. And they also recently got the cutest puppy, Moose, who some how, after wearing him down, managed to bring out the 2 year old pup in Murph. Still wish we had taken Moose with us. Anyway, so we stopped in to see them and sleep in their driveway for a few nights.
Over the next few days, they took us all over San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley, where they live, and had some of the best meals, and wine, we’ve ever tasted. Walking around San Fran was great (the hills are no joke), and we started off in the Mission area for tacos at La Taqueria (I think that’s what it was called? Either way, amazing tacos), spent some time at the Ferry market building, saw Alcatraz, and of course, went to see the famed Golden Gate Bridge because that’s what you do when you go to San Francisco.
As luck would have it, the bridge was entirely engulfed in thick fog. Blue skies and sunny everywhere else, with the exception of the bridge, which we literally could not see. Not many people can say that they attempted to see the bridge and failed, so I’d like to think we had a pretty one-of-a-kind experience.
After a day of walking around the city, we headed to Oakland (which in itself was a cool place to see and super eclectic) to the wine bar Ordinaire, where Alex works. If ever in Oakland, this is a great wine bar to visit. This is where we saw the biggest contrast having just come from wineries in Napa. Here we started to really learn about natural wines, and farming, and the substantial differences between natural wine-making and the consumer wines we are used to drinking…the preservatives, sulphur, and all the good stuff that gives us bad wine hangovers, that you don’t get with natural wine.
The following day, after a delicious breakfast (I had souffle pancakes…never even knew that existed before), showing us around the town of Berkeley, a bbq in a local park with some of their friends (and more awesome wine…see the trend?), and sampling great beer at a local brewery (with our pups in tow, of course), our awesome tour guides and wine-teachers gave us one of the best gifts…an incredible home-cooked meal. We’re still raving about it. Oh and Alex taught Derek how to make an aioli, which might be up there as Derek’s personal highlight of the trip so far.
It was the perfect way to see the Bay Area..with friends who know better than we would how to really experience it, incredible food and drink, and great company.
Derek’s addendum to this post: A couple quick things that I noticed Tara forgot to mention in her post about the Ol’Bay Area. According to Claire, the new cool thing in San Fran is to be naked… naked people all the time just hanging dong in the downtown areas. During our few days there, we managed to go “hanging dong” visual free. Also, we walked to the park… you know the park, the park that was in the beginning credits of Full House… I checked all the mailboxes, but no Tanner to be found… they must have moved. There were also Mrs. Doubtfire references made… because I’m pretty sure that was filmed there too… but we did see the “painted ladies” which is a row of nice victorian style homes along the park. Kind of reminded me of Thomas Park in Southie… big beautiful victorian style homes right next to the park that probably cost more than a toilet of solid gold. Let’s see, there was also the discussion of building a greenhouse when we get back… I actually have built a couple greenhouses in the past and they’re not easy… But it’s on the to do list for when we get home. Tara really didn’t do the aioli justice either. Everywhere we’ve gone to eat (the breweries across the country) have all sold hamburgers with an aioli of some sort. House aioli, chipotle aioli, aioli aioli… just whatever they could think of and I wanted to know how to do it too. Alex taught me to make an aioli while he was just throwing together the best lamb shoulder I’ve ever had. Lamb with potatoes, grilled scallions, and a sauce that he made which… well, there’s no way I’m going to remember the name. But we had my aioli with dinner too and it really wasn’t that bad… Best part of my aioli lesson:
“ok Alex, I’m ready, where do we start?”
“WASH YOUR HANDS MAN!”…
“got it…” (hand washing) “Now what?”
Always step one… wash the mitts.
Tara’s side note to my addendum: Tara would like to point out that as Derek writes his addendum, he’s drinking Jack Daniels Single Barrel 132.5 proof whiskey. (compliments of CrazyTalk Milton), while Tara was sober when she wrote the “lacking color” blog post above.
withoutwhatifs 