"And then there is California."

There is science, logic, reason; 

there is thought verified by experience.  

And then there is California.

-Edward Abbey

This past weekend I traveled to San Francisco to meet AC after the Oracle OpenWorld Conference.  We had a great time together, and got to do some touristy activities.  

On Friday, we took the boat across to Alcatraz Island.  It was really neat to hear the audio tour, as told by a former prison guard.  However, I think much of the tour would have been better relayed through visual displays on the wall (to be read at leisure), or even a television documentary.  I was also amazed at how small the cellblock area was.  I had made assumptions that it would be very large, but it was only three short hallways, and three stories tall.

The coolest part of being on Alcatraz Island was that we had an unobscured view of the planes practicing for the Fleet Week shows.

Saturday we took the opportunity to head south of San Francisco to Stanford University.  Being from Texas, we love to watch football, and AC is a big fan of Stanford, though more specifically their band and the unofficial mascot, "the tree."  

We picked a great game to go to (they played Arizona), and had great seats, only three rows up in the corner of the endzone, that only cost us about $25 total.  AC was thrilled he could purchase SC a stuffed tree as a souvenir.  

We also went to a number of amazing restaurants, including Fog City Diner; Tiernan's Irish Pub, where I had a delicious shepherd's pie (which has made me impatient for January and Ireland);

TOWN restaurant in San Carlos, where we got to sit at the kitchen bar and watch the executive chef do his work; and Sear's Fine Food, where we had the most delicious breakfast (eggs Benedict for me) before heading to the airport, and saw actor Johnny Depp as he was leaving.

Of course, no trip to San Francisco is complete without a trip to Hubert Keller's Burger Bar (we went twice), and were thoroughly disappointed we could not get in to Kokkari, a devine Greek restaurant, due to the massive amount of people traveling to San Francisco for the weekend due to a large number of events in the city.

I also discovered a local bookshop called Alexander Book Co., which made me wish we had more (or any) independent book shops near our home.  This shop is the epitome of the local, independent bookstore, and I had extreme bookstore jealousy.

All in all, we had a great time spending time together, but we very much missed SC, who stayed at Grandma's house.  It is good to be home!

Feel free to leave comments in the form of suggestions, advice or opinions about anything I have posted here.