San Francisco, Day 4

Last official day at "work" in San Fran. I took off to get some breakfast at a coffee shop - Specialty's Cafe and Bakery - around the corner from the hotel that I saw when we were looking for Indian food the night before. A great mocha and ham+egg+cheese breakfast sandwich thing.





After our last day of the press tour I went out again and picked up some cards (Spider Man) from a comics and art museum a few doors down from the hotel. I tried the balcony on one of the floors in the hotel to take a few more self-portraits and write some letters.



Lunchtime found me just taking off down Mission Street. I passed a spot between two office buildings with a slowly rotating structure and a large clump of bamboo.



I didn't see it on my way back, so I didn't get to investigate. What I did see was a huge flock of grey pigeons, with one brown one in their midst. Later on people would be hanging out at this park bench going, "What's up, pigeons?" "We're chill," reply the birds. Indeed!



I swing into Noah's Bagels, which looks like a nice New York style deli place, and have an Odwalla Superfood juice, a Reuben sandwich on marbled rye (great, and my only complaint is that I prefer my bread more toasted) and a chocolate chip cookie, which was huge and good, but can't compare to the best (my wife's).





Here is my route. A brisk 1.6 miles from my hotel to The Embarcadero and back, so I may have worked off the first sip of whipped cream from this morning's mocha!



That evening we went to Americano Restaurant & Bar, which happened to be one street away from The Embarcadero...right where I was a few hours earlier! I talked the group into walking instead of taking a cab.



I couldn't decide between two Syrahs for wine, so I took one with the appetizer and one with the meal, and I liked the first one better. Which ones were they? Data...lost. Wait, I found the wine menu, all thirteen pages! The one I liked was SYRAH, LOST CANYON STAGE GULCH VINEYARD, SONOMA COAST, 2004, at $12/glass, and the one I thought was just okay was SYRAH, D’ALESSANDRO, CORTONA, 2002, a bargain at $9/glass.

Here is there dinner menu. For appetizers we got the FRA’MANI HANDCRAFTED SALUMI, the MARIN SUN FARMS BEEF CARPACCIO, the “MARGARITA” PIZZETTA and another pizza that I can't find.



For dinner, I went out on a limb and chose the HERITAGE PORK DUO, which is described as slow roasted loin, seared belly, brussel sprouts, pickled shallots, carrot and jalepeno [sic] puree.



Yes, seared belly. The pig's belly. I guess that is the second part of the pork "duo" along with the loin. It was okay - not my favorite. The jalapeno (which was misspelled on the menu) puree was what originally intrigued me, but I'm not even sure I tasted it.

It was close to midnight by the time we got back to the hotel, and I needed some coffee. The only place around that was open was Mel's Drive-In, which was up a few blocks. I sat at the bar, had a few cups of coffee and struck up a conversation about math (pi, phi, Fibonacci), photography (rule of thirds) and philosophy with someone who happened to be from Austin (AMD) in town for a conference!




Here are a few more pics.