Yesterday’s pictures can be found here, starting just after the silly picture of our In-n-Out receipt.
We were a bit slow to get started on Sunday morning, more due to the general lack of morning people (besides myself 🙂 We piled everyone (me, takaza, linnaeus, roho, and genet) into our Saturn Outlook and drove off southward, to explore San Francisco. The drive through Napa and Sonoma Counties there was spectacular, and we saw lots of things that would have been fun if money and time were no object (i.e. open-air biplane tours!).
After a short one-hour drive, we arrived at the Marin Headlands, just on the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge and a place for amazing views of the bridge, the bay, and the city. We wandered around there for a bit, enjoying the refreshing breeze coming off the ocean and the great weather, then it was back to the car to venture into the city. Unfortunately, the GPS’s directions were rather…confused. We wound up taking a couple of wrong turns that led us to some astonishingly steep streets that taxed our SUV a bit. It made for entertaining driving, and a steady string of expletives from me. We combined the GPS directions with a handy map we had picked up and eventually found our destination: Magnolia Pub and Brewery at Haight and Masonic.
The beers were fantastic, and the food no less so. They had some nice sampler glasses, and we took advantage of the fact that February is Strong Beer Month; I started out with a trippel, a doppleweizen, and an imperial stout. Did I mention we hadn’t had any food yet that day? Man, I’m a cheap date. Dan loved the house-brewed grape and orange cream sodas, and Lydia found their root beer delicious. Then came the food! My Dungeoness crab crepes were pretty good, but Dan’s buttermilk biscuits with ginger sausage gravy, Lydia’s cheeseburger, and Paul’s salmon boxty were even better. The real winner was Brendan’s pizza with the incongruous combination of coconut-braised pork, tikka masala sauce, and mushrooms, was just divine. Another round of beers followed and by the end we were full and happy.
After lunch we wandered around the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood for a few hours, enjoying the street musicians and the little shops. Brendan almost picked up an expensive synthesizer widget, but the price wasn’t quite right. Afterwards we adjourned to an amusingly socialist coffee house, then it was back to the car. The original plan had been to stop by Joseph Schmidt Confections, but we had to drop that plan in favor of a quick tour of Fisherman’s Wharf (which we didn’t actually explore because 1.) no parking to be found, and 2.) wall-to-wall tourists). Somewhere in there we also got horribly lost and heading south on US 101 unwillingly, but we got turned back around and back on course.
On the drive home, we managed a brief stop in Novato where we met up with partran. We had a fun but all-too-brief visit as we did some shopping in the local Safeway and picked up stuff for dinner. He gave me a lovely birthday present, a couple of cheeses from Fair Oaks Farms. We had a chance to catch up a bit and chat, and it was great to see him.
After rushing around all day, the evening was blessedly low-key. Dan cooked up some tasty garlic and mushrooms in butter as an appetizer. Brendan braved the darkness and an unfamiliar grill to cook up some yummy steaks. We polished off another couple of bottles of wine along the way, and finished the evening with apple pie and ice cream. It was a great ending to a great day.
And now we have today – yep, it’s my birthday! Thank you so much to everyone for their kind birthday wishes 🙂 What’s planned for the day? Beats me! We have the “morning event” and the “afternoon event” and somewhere in there we hope to have the opportunity to taste and pick up some of the local olive oils. I do know that dinner tonight is going to be amazing though, as we have reservations for Bouchon, Thomas Keller’s bistro not far from here.
Time to shower and start the day!