The plan

The current plan has us leaving San Francisco Saturday morning - after
one last trip through Little Italy for an espresso and pastries. We
head up to Napa Saturday and down to Yosemite Sunday. Then we'll
spend one last night in Fisherman's Wharf before flying out Sunday.

I think the kids are enjoying the experience so far. Me and John were
the only ones capable of finishing our Ghiradelli Sunday. I think
we've earned a second trip to the ice cream shop but I'm not sure if
we're going to bring the girls since they had such a pitiful ice-cream
eating performance.

Eating well...

After starting the day eating an over priced hotel breakfast, we
headed to North Beach or "Little Italy". Leave it to me to drool over
tons of Italian pastries and settle on an apple fritter - not my
proudest moment. We then found a well-respected local cafe, Cafe
Trieste, where I enjoyed an excellent double espresso.

After the coffee it became clear that we needed a stroller- ok, Becca
was right we should have packed the McLearen. So Becca took the kids
to the play-park while I walked through China Town in search of a
stroller. Proudly returning with my prize, I quickly learned Becca
had a double stroller in mind. Oh well, tomorrow.

From Italia, we took the Muni downtown to get me a fleece - its quite
a bit cooler than I expected.

After picking up the fleece, we headed to Pier 39 via the old style
cable car.. We saw tons of seals hanging out and even got to see one
rather rude seal pushing the other off into the water. I suspect
Becca and I were more excited about the seals than either of the kids.
After the seals we went into Pier 39 proper, where I had the good
fortune of helping a guy mount a six foot unicycle - I know, weird
huh? We couldn't miss out on an opportunity to make the parents dizzy
so we took a spin on the carousel.

Leaving the pier, we dined at Rainforest Cafe which we were familiar
with from Virginia but ours has closed down before the kids ever
experienced it.

We now sit tired in the hotel and debating whether a Ghiradelli ice
cream sundae is doable.

By the way, we got some cupcakes last night from karascupcakes and
they were phenominal. Becca went through a cupcake kick about a year
or so ago where we tried many different bakeries and they were all
only ok. Katas was great. The staff seemed to downplay the vanilla,
but knowing the challenges of making a really good and moist vanilla
cake, I think it was my favorite.

As far as the bridge, I'll let you know when the fog lifts or we get
closer to it. We're thinking about doing a fire engine tour tomorrow
which would get us close enough to appreciate it.

Mediocre eating...

Freshly arrived from a long flight,we were hungry and didn't want to
overthink the selection. So we picked pretty much the first sit down
restaurant we saw. Well, turns out we were sort of tricked into going
into the restaurant next door, Nonni Rose's, which was only alright
and that's being pretty generous. The bread was sub-par for San
francisco. The chowder was decent - everything else, not so much.

We're staying at the Holiday Inn, which we got for a ridiculously
cheap $89 - thanks Hotwire.com. The hotel is clean, decent, and
perfectly located. Highly recommended basically for being good in a
great location.

Virgin America

I'm impressed. I wasn't enthusiastic when Becca booked our flight on
Virgin America but am now pleasantly surprised. The coolness:
- media players in all seats with pretty good tv stations
- comfortable seats
- reasonably sized restrooms
- reasonable legroom
- flight crew seems genuinely happy to be onboard helping out. A huge
change from the bitterness I've experienced from other airlines' crew.

The negatives:
- headphones are terrible. Sound was great from my iPod headphones
though.

Very enjoyable, good work Becca!

Sent from my iPod

Taxing Fast Food

I never thought I'd actually say I'm supportive of a new tax, but here
it is, I think taxing fast-food might be a brilliant idea.

http://wcbstv.com/local/fast.food.tax.2.712510.html