Sunday, August 22nd
We decided to give the hotel’s free breakfast a pass this morning and went to a nice coffee shop on the main downtown street of Morgan Hill. It was still early (7 a.m.), so the downtown was pretty quiet. We had two good coffees and lemon cranberry scones that were fresh from the oven and still warm. After breakfast, we followed the Monterey Highway to San Jose. This route was slower than the freeway but much more interesting. In San Jose, we stopped to see a new development called Santana Row. I had seen it written up in a magazine and it looked like something we’d want to see. The development includes a mix of uses (commercial, residential and recreational) and the buildings front onto attractive streetscapes. There is a plaza that holds a market each Sunday and a street that includes outdoor cafes and bars along its central median. The building designs allude to a high-density European environment with pedestrian scale retail and restaurant frontages.
From San Jose we drove along the El Camino Real until we reached Sunnyvale – the City where husband lived during high school and his early years at college. The last time we went to Sunnyvale about 20 years ago, he couldn’t find his former home because the City had grown so much. This time, we had a street map and found the house that still looked the same except for an orange tree in its front yard.
Our next stop was in Palo Alto where we visited friends and had a lovely barbequed salmon lunch outside in the sunshine. We took them a bottle of zinfandel wine that we had bought at the Guilgielmo winery the night before. We hadn’t seen our friends for a few years, so we spent the afternoon talking about old times and our current lives. We left there late in the afternoon and drove into San Francisco. Thankfully, the traffic wasn’t too busy until we reached the City. We dropped the car off a few blocks from our hotel and then walked over to the Sir Francis Drake on Union Square. Husband had chosen this hotel because it was part of the Kimpton Hotel chain and the room was very reasonably priced ($125 a night). Our room was on the 17th floor and overlooked Union Square. It wasn’t very large but the bed was comfortable, the room clean and it was quiet.
Since we had eaten lunch quite late, we decided to go for a light dinner. We walked a few blocks to John’s Grill that is known for being the hang out of Dashell Hammett (writer of the Maltese Falcon). We had bowls of delicious seafood chowder and seafood salads for dinner. They were the perfect amount of food. After dinner we walked around the area before returning to our hotel. The streets were full of people and it was amazing how many tourists there were in this City.
Monday, August 23rd
Today we decided to start with a full breakfast and went to Lori’s Diner on Powell Street. The second storey restaurant was very large like many restaurants here and the décor was 1950s style. After breakfast, we walked over to the BART station at Powell and Market and went to El Cerrito, a City just north of Berkeley to visit husband’s parent’s graves in Sunset Cemetery. SF is having hot weather for the next few days, so our walk up to the gravesites was very hot and sweaty but the views made it worth the effort. The cemetery is located on a hilltop and overlooks the Bay area including downtown SF and the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges. After some searching among the grave markers, we found husband’s father’s grave and then his mother’s. Husband hadn’t visited them for many years and this was something he wanted to do.
When we returned to the BART station, we had cold drinks (fruit smoothies) and did I mention the temperature would reach 85 degrees Fahrenheit in SF and that’s hot for this city. We took the BART to the Embarcadero to begin a walk along the waterfront and our first stop was at the nicely restored Ferry Building. Here we could wander through some unique shops selling specialty foods and related items. We went into one of my favourite shops “Sur La Table” that I had discovered many years ago in Seattle and it turns out that Seattle was where the store originated. I bought myself a cookbook of Spanish cuisine – paella, tapas, etc. While at the Ferry Building, we also watched the ferries leaving for the communities across the bay, such as Sausalito. We also enjoyed another cool drink – iced tea this time.
We continued walking along the Embarcadero and wherever possible followed the pedestrian walkway along the waterfront. Two Canadian navy ships were docked at Pier 27 and we could see some of the sailors leaving the ship for some free time in the city. We walked along Pier 39 but it was very crowded with tourists, so we left and continued our walk. There are still sea lions on the piers and although there seemed to be fewer than previous visits, there still must have been a couple of hundred basking in the sun. The area around Fisherman’s Wharf and its nearby piers are undergoing some renovations, so we didn’t stop for any crab or shrimp cocktails. Instead we continued on to the foot of Hyde Street where we had cold drinks in an Irish pub. I ordered a cider and was shocked to learn that they didn’t have any. What kind of Irish pub is that? After cooling off a bit, we continued walking to the North Beach area where there are lots of great Italian restaurants. We went to Calzones, a place that is completely decorated with Italian food products – garlic braids, salamis, tins of tomatoes and sauce, various boxes of pasta and so on. The restaurant opens onto the sidewalk but the hot sun forced us inside. We had a good dinner with an eggplant starter and fettuccini entrees. Husband added two glasses of wine but I stuck to iced tea. After dinner we made our way back to the hotel via SF's extensive Chinatown. I was surprised to see that many of the stores were still open on a Monday night.