We caught San Francisco on a relatively quiet weekend. I'd read that California was having a slow summer in terms of tourism and they're not kidding. Of course, that means it's a perfect time to travel around out here. Our drive up was a breeze - we met Gunther at his place in Mountain View early in the afternoon and had lunch in Los Altos. Then we took a full tour of the Stanford campus, met some of his students, reassured him that he had a pretty cushy work situation, and ended the day with a great dinner in Woodside before heading up to the city to sleep.

I can recommend the Cartwright Hotel on Sutter near Union Square. It's a clean, cozy place with free breakfast, access to parking, and a great rate of 99 bucks a night. We spent the day on Sunday walking around mostly - up Columbus Ave. to Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39 to see the sea lions, then a little shoe shopping in Union Square, followed by a hot dog/pretzel lunch and quick jaunt over to the Haight where Akhil had a nutella & banana crepe. Here he is in the City Lights bookstore on Columbus Ave.:



Then we headed to Bernal Heights to see his family - his brother has a great house there near his lab at UCSF's sparkling new campus - another beautiful place. The academic world has been showing some nice aesthetics lately. It's got funky furniture, light wood, scientific-looking artwork and lots of chrome. He took us along with his wife Suzanne and his/Akhil's parents to Andalu for tapas -- which was okay but we're food-spoiled now that we live in L.A. We were exhausted by the end of the day - and I would NOT recommend staying at Le Petit Auberge for a quick sleeping spot - we got a small (they called it "cozy") room where we got to hear the garbagemen do their work at 4 a.m. and none of the little niceties like turn-down service, chocolates on the pillow, 4 p.m. wine... we checked in too late, unfortunately. Monday we had breakfast in the Mission with Hiten and Suzanne before heading back down to 'Hell-A' - where we had our best meal of the weekend, actually, at Billy's Diner here in Glendale. I do love San Francisco - it's so opposite of L.A. though it's unbelievable that the two are related. Well, we're still young, sort of...