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San Francisco - Part 1
Written by: Dominick A. Miserandino
Photography by: Margherita Miserandino
An introduction to San Francisco with jetlag, great food, and a brilliant quote from the author, worthy of Mark Twain.
Mark Twain once said that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. Most people focus on the accuracy of the quote, but I’m a bit more focused on the fact that he had such a notable quote. Writing a quote seems like something that I should do too.
San Francisco is the type of city that, even with many factors against it, cannot be done badly. In spite of rain, jetlag and your average annoying dinner companion here and there... in spite of it all, nothing can ruin San Francisco. In fact, it is so nice a city; it makes you wonder why you don’t live there. Whenever you meet somebody they inevitably say, "Oooh, San Francisco, that’s one of my favorite cities". Even after earthquakes, and a dot-com bust, people love the damn place. People defend the city like they do their own grandmothers! If you even dare to say something bad about San Francisco, they’ll make it quite known that you’ve said the last bad thing about anything.
Anyway, we landed in Oakland to get to San Francisco, as Jet Blue lands across the bay. Don’t tell the Jet Blue agent that you’re going to San Francisco because they’ll insist that you’re not, and that you’re going to Oakland.
This was a unique trip. I’m not going to lie, even though I hate saying that I’m not going to lie. It implies that I do lie quite often, but I’m not going to here. The goal of the trip was to learn about Best Western. They insist that they’re really this great hotel line with more than just motels, and in San Francisco they have unique properties.
We rode from Oakland to downtown San Francisco and arrived at Fisherman’s Wharf in less than 30 minutes. We headed straight towards our hotel, "The Tuscan Inn by Best Western" and checked in.
We were exhausted, but at 5:00 PM the hotel has a free wine tasting hour. They like to do a lot of quirky things like that to make people happy. For example, they hide a little crab in one guest room a night. And if you have that lucky crab, well you win a "fun pack". Back to our itinerary, we rested in the room, relaxed and then headed downstairs to go to the free wine tasting. Fear not, it’s not a real crab, although I feel that it would make the game much more interesting.
"Excuse me, Front Desk, my son just got bit by a rather large crustacean."
Anyway, since the wine tasting is called "Free", people take advantage of the notion, and therefore the lobby is a hopping little place. There’s a rather homey looking fireplace and all of the guests are in various stages of inebriation. It was a great way to meet some of your fellow travelers and feel a bit more acclimated to the area. For example, I met one lovely guest who insisted that Coca Cola was infused with real cocaine to get people addicted to the product. In spite of my protests about it not being cost-efficient, she explained that lots of these things happen in the world, and I’d learn with time. After all Coca-Cola controls the Colombian drug trade with the government. I’m still trying to figure out how I can buy a 12 pack of coke for 15 cents a can and they can afford to put cocaine in there.
Anyway, after the lecture we headed to Café Pescatore the adjoining Italian restaurant for a bit of dinner and to settle in. Most restaurants connected to hotels frighten me a bit, as they seem to be more well versed in the art of microwave cookery than other culinary arts. With a lead in sentence like that you can expect to hear that I was pleasantly surprised. Clearly my lead in sentence got the point across that this was the opposite of my expectations. The restaurant was darn good and had pretty big portions. Of course they also had an abundance of wine, but after the three or four free glasses at the tasting, who really needed more?
Well, this was a record because it was the first time that I’ve ever visited a city, and did not see the city until the next day. We were tired after the flight. I mean, as Margherita’s Italian mother, La Madre says, "Why you a-fly to San Francisco for six hours? You could be a in Italy that long."
We were a bit tired. Then, you add in the wine at the tasting, and the even more wine at the dinner... well, we went back to the room, searched around for our lucky plastic crab, checked for a real one too, and then went to bed.
Day 1 - San Francisco
Day 2 - San Francisco
Day 3 - Napa
Day 4 - Napa
Day 5 - San Francisco
Day 5 Part 2 - San Francisco
Day 7 - San Francisco
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