If You’re Going to San Francisco
My favourite cardiologist told me that drinking one glass of red wine every day is good for your cardiovascular health. According to studies it’s even better than not drinking any alcohol at all! (Of course you shouldn’t push your luck by drinking those huge wine glasses that can hold the whole bottle! That doesn’t count!)
San Francisco has some really good wine, beer and food. It was the first time we tried a type of wine called Zinfandel. It’s good. We did some wine and beer tasting around San Francisco. There are so many luscious wine fields and wineries. Some are quite pricey though. (Like $20 to taste 4 different wines.) Some have free tastings. 🙂 Russian River Brewing Company makes a famous beer called Pliny the Elder. It’s a double IPA and Marc says it’s one of the best beers he’s ever had. (It was a bit strong for my liking.) Lagunitas Brewing Company had a very nice atmosphere. They had a live “cowboy” band and we also went on a tour to see Lagunitas’ massive brewing equipment.
We would never go hungry (or eat unappetizing food) with Babak around! Our first night we had yummy half price pizza at Pizza Orgasmica and got a free pint of their beer because the waitress took too long to bring the beer we ordered. On our second night we had the most delicious Thai food! It felt as if Babak ordered everything on the menu so we could taste it all! There were no left-overs. On our last night we went to the San Francisco food trucks for supper. The trucks sell mixtures and blends of food from around the world. After the trucks, we went to Toronado Bar where I had a pomegranate cider and everyone else had Pliny the Elder. So we’ve had a lot of good food!
Babak has impressive cycling skills (or he knows how to teleport) because he cycles those San Francisco hills in record time. We were driving in a car and he got to the bar from the food trucks before us. He also cycled back to his house from the bar and got there at almost the same time as us. Now every time Marc sees a cyclist on the road he says: “There’s Babak.”
We almost got stuck without fuel on the bridge into San Francisco! That would have been bad because there was so much traffic. A while before the bridge, when we were already part of the traffic jam, our rental car’s fuel light started flashing “low” and couldn’t tell us how many miles we had left to drive. We also weren’t sure how soon we could get to a gas station. It was slightly stressful but we, the car and us, made it.
Some of the calories we’ve eaten have been worked off by a lot of walking. San Francisco has many hills! On our first day we explored the city by foot from downtown to the Palace of Fine Arts Theater to the Golden gate bridge and back to Babak’s place. The buildings in SF all touch or are really close together and there never seems to be any parking anywhere- especially no free parking. There are so many different types of people about and the city has a chilled, laid back kind of atmosphere. The local bus even does it’s announcements in three different languages; English, Mandarin and Spanish! Apparently on Monday (we arrived Tuesday), they had quite a heavy tremor (light earthquake) so we just missed it!
Thanks to Babak and Arwind that we could stay at your place! We had a great time in San Francisco.
