Our general travel route for this week...
This is a partial "wee trailer week". We head off to Petaluma where the trailer will stay for the next week, but we will abandon it for 3 nights while we stay in San Francisco with our friend Marian from Vancouver. She is joining us for a quick weekend getaway where we have tickets to a couple of art exhibits in the city. More on those later...
We awoke to a much nicer (warmer) morning on Monday. Sort of too bad to leave the area with a forecast of much warmer weather for the next week but we're just trading it for the same nice forecast around the Bay area as well.
We got all packed up, made some coffee for the road and headed off... all of about 3 or so hours up to Petaluma. We stopped for a break in Pacifica then decided to take the Skyline highway up the west side of San Francisco rather than the faster freeway loop. It was a nice drive until we got further up the
Great Highway where there was much construction. As we drove up past the Cliff House Restaurant the road turned into the bumpiest section of temporary pavement we have ever encountered... pretty well everything in the trailer went topsy-turvy after that one... but finally we got up onto Geary where it was a lot smoother.
We drove across Geary to Park Presidio then over the Golden Gate Bridge and stopped for a bit at
The Village in Corta Madera before heading up to the KOA in Petaluma. We had thought about staying at a RV park right near the village but it is right on the 101 freeway and from the reviews we read, not all that appealing. The KOA is in a great setting and only about 15-20 minutes further up the freeway... besides we needed to get the car oil changed and there is a Nissan dealer in Petaluma.
We will have the trailer parked in the KOA at Petaluma for the rest of the week so checked in and paid for 6 nights. We'll stay here through Wednesday then go into San Francisco where we'll meet up with our friend Marian from Vancouver for a 3 night stay in the city. At the KOA we picked a spot a bit up from the restroom (you don't want a spot too close as others like to take shortcuts through occupied spots on their way to the restroom). After setting up the trailer we drove over to the Nissan dealer to arrange an oil change appointment (set for Tuesday morning) then headed into downtown Petaluma for a stroll along the streets including a stop in at
Copperfields Books, a few boutiques and some groceries at the excellent
Petaluma Market where we picked up some great looking pork chops for grilling later (and they were as good as they looked!).
Tuesday after the car oil change we headed off to Berkeley for the day. We went to our usual areas and stores (
Stone Mountain and Daughter Fabrics, Earthly Goods, and
Hida Tools to name a few) and stopped in at
Berkeley Bowl for lunch. We were going to do some grocery shopping at Berkeley Bowl but they had the air conditioning set such that it was actually too chilly to hang around in there. We left with only a bag of unsalted peanuts. After going back to the KOA for a late afternoon swim we stopped back in at the Petaluma Market for some more of those great pork chops (btw, the pork chops at Berkeley Bowl looked the same but cost over $2 a pound more).
Wednesday was a day to re-familiarize ourselves with parts of San Francisco where we hit some places that we knew Marian was not likely to want to go to. So it was a pretty casual drive around in the city with a stop at Laurel Heights Village Shopping Center for lunch before heading back to Petaluma to prepare for our 3 day visit to the city. Preparing meant mostly laundry but also packing away the Lodge hibatchi and anything else that didn't need to be left outside while we are in the city. Later in the early evening we went into Petaluma and had a nice dinner with wine on the patio of our favorite little Petaluma cafe,
Cafe Aqus...
Thursday morning we took everything out of the car and stowed it all in the wee trailer, pitched anything in the cooler that wouldn't be good by Sunday afternoon, filled the coolers with ice, locked it all up and headed into San Francisco. We got into the city by about 11:30 so it was a bit early to check into the
Queen Anne Hotel, but since they have a parking lot we thought we would see if we could at least leave the car there for the day rather than have to find parking downtown. We totally lucked out... the room assigned to us was available already so they let us check in... the major advantage being that not only could we leave the car in their lot we could also empty it out and leave our stuff in the room. As the concierge said "...make sure you don't leave anything in your car because they will break a window for even a raggedy old sweater...". So we left the car as bare bones as we could (and over the 3 days had no issues although one car on the street near the hotel did have a rear side window smashed while we were there). Anyway, Marian's flight was delayed an hour so we had lots of time to take a Muni bus downtown to more places she was unlikely to want to go, most notably
Britex Fabrics where Kris picked up some very pretty fabric. Then after a nice lunch at Nieman Marcus we strolled around a bit before heading back to the hotel to await Marian.
Marian arrived early evening and after a visit we all wandered down the street to
Pizza Inferno for an excellent dinner then walked over to the Japan Center before calling it a day.
Friday morning we had tickets to see the De Yong museum special exhibit featuring Vermeer's masterpiece
The Girl with the Pearl Earring. Our tickets were for 9:30 so we got there a bit early only to find that the museum didn't open until 9:30 meaning we had to wait about 15 minutes outside. We wandered over to the concourse and watched a group of people doing Tai Chi...
...very graceful.
Finally the door opened and in we went. On the way in we snapped a photo of the mural advertising the exhibit (since we knew we would not be allowed to take photos of the actual painting)...
MOST EXCELLENT! The exhibit also featured numerous Rembrandt etchings amongst others from the same Dutch era. After the exhibit we drove out west to the
Cliff House where, after a brief wait, we were able to score a surfside window, overlooking the Pacific, for lunch...
After lunch we went over to Laurel Heights then along Fillmore streets so Marian could do some shopping. We are all suffering minor ailments of some kind so then it was back to the hotel for a rest before going back up Fillmore to
Le Mediterranee (probably our most favorite restaurant in San Francisco) where they did not disappoint.
Saturday morning we had tickets to see the special exhibit of
China's Terracotta Warriors at the Asian Art Museum. Although it is unfortunate they let in too many people at the same time, it is another excellent exhibit.
Before leaving for the exhibit Saturday morning, we discovered we had 3 old Clipper cards which, upon checking, still had enough value on them to get us to the museum, downtown and back to the hotel on the Muni buses. Easy peasy, and saved us the hassle of trying to drive and park for the day. One block walk to get our first bus, one transfer then one block walk to the Asian Art Museum.
After the museum we walked over to Market Street and caught another bus down to the Ferry Building where the Saturday market inside and outside was in full swing. We wandered around the booths outside on the plaza for a while before heading inside for lunch at
Mijita Mexican restaurant. Nice. After lunch we visited the Street Car Museum before boarding another bus back up Market towards 3rd Street to the SF MOMA gift shop and a walk over to Nordstroms to finish off this part of the day. By then we were all too bagged to walk up the hill to catch a bus back to the hotel so just went to the Marriott taxi stand where it was a short wait. Difference: bus would have been $6 after a 5 block uphill walk; Taxi was $10... worth it.
For dinner, since we still had enough on the Clipper cards, we hopped a bus right outside the hotel door (well across the street) and went up Fillmore to have dinner, and watch the Giants beat up on the Dodgers, at Harry's Bar.
Sunday morning Marian scheduled her airport shuttle for 10:15 so we only had time together for a breakfast. We decided to forego the hotel breakfast after Marian discovered a local place, a couple of blocks down Sutter, using her IPAD Urban Spoon app. Billed as "the best breakfast in San Francisco"
Sweet Maple definitely lived up to that reputation. Fantastic breakfast!!!
Then it was back to the hotel to send Marian off, check out ourselves then hit one more store on the way out of town. Not sure if it would be open, we headed over to Clement Street and found
Fabrix open for business... Kris went in while I, Brian, drove around for about an hour before daring to enter the store. As I walked in, Kris exclaimed to the sales person "... oh good, here's my sherpa now..."... there on the table was a mound of fabric nearing the size of Mt Everest (no kidding)! WOW... but what fabulous fabric for not much more than $100. Now the pressure will be on, when we get home, to get that craft room finished! What is so fabulous about Fabrix, you ask?? It is a store that sells mill ends from local garment manufacturers, so you may find the fabric that is used for the garments currently in the stores. Kris scored enough of the fabric used for MicraPak raincoats to make several coats as well as the fabric used in a nice (expensive) t-shirt she had tried on in a local upscale shop. The deal is, you need to know about fabric because nothing is labelled - but when the fabric is $2.90 a yard, you can make a educated guess.
That was enough of San Francisco for the day so we headed back across the Golden Gate Bridge to Petaluma. In the market we picked up some Calamari steaks and veggies for dinner then headed back to the KOA to get the trailer and car repacked and ready to head north Monday morning. After getting everything packed we drove into Petaluma to have a glass of wine at Aqus but found they close early on Sunday so went into downtown and walked over to
McNears Saloon & Dining House where we watched the Giants complete a sweep over the Dodgers over a couple of glasses of wine. We discovered there is a theatre that has good music and will keep that in mind for our next trip. Then back to the KOA for those Calamari steaks and call it a week.
