I left my heart...
Almost exactly one year ago, I went up to San Francisco for the first time. I flew there by myself, got a room at a cheap but charming hotel in North Beach, and spent two days exploring the city. I walked from Embarcadero to Fisherman's Wharf, took a bus through the Presidio and down to Haight Ashbury, wandered through the financial district, experienced the craziest cab ride ever, found Lombard street, snapped a dozen photos, and recentered myself after a harsh break up.

In what represents an example of things coming full-circle, I just returned from a weekend in SF. This time I spent the weekend with a charming male companion. We left Friday afternoon, and our flight got into SF around 7 or 8 pm. We took BART to our hotel in downtown. We Pricelined it, and ended up in a massive, erie, modernist business traveller joint. Hundreds of rooms, and plenty of exposed concrete, with a revolving lounge on the top floor.

We had dinner across the street at the Port of SF, which was recently redone to house a farmers' market, small fancy food joints, and one, big restaurant- The Slanted Door. The food was Cali-Vietnamese, served family style, and hella good. Our waiter chided us for "staying in the baby pool" because we only ordered a salad, noodle dish, and shrimp entree to share. We were planning on meeting R.'s friend J. for drinks later, so we wanted to save room for beer.

We took BART to the Mission District, met up with J., and ended up checking out a couple neighborhood bars. I had one drink the whole night- a double Barcadi diet coke, which hit me right away and made me loud and obnoxious. The guys assured me that I was being funny and charming. After they pounded a couple Irish Carbombs, we called it a night.

I woke up around six am because our hotel room was boiling hot. I adjusted the thermostat, and was drifting into sleep when the fire alarm went off. R. woke up, but before we had pulled ourselves together to evacuate, a voice came over the loudspeaker to let everyone know it was a false alarm.
We fell back asleep, woke up dehydrated, and finally made it out. We rented bikes, and rode over the Golden Gate Bridge and into Sausalito. Amazing! Sausalito was way too quaint and beautiful to be real. We stopped at a cafe and took a ferry back to SF. We returned the bikes, had a nap at the hotel, and freshened up for a fancy dinner at Da Flora (a small Italian restaurant in North Beach). I had a nice pasta with rapilini, garlic, and chiles and R. had a rich, fresh crab pasta. We splurged on a pricey wine and generally did the whole "muy romatico" thing. Tiramisu followed, and we returned to our hotel full and happy.

This morning, we woke up early to make the 9:00 AM service at Glide Memorial. If you're ever in SF on a Sunday, check out church services at Glide. I haven't been to church services in years, and I don't consider myself religious. The experience was powerful, and the message today was political. The mother of an Army lieutenant who is facing a court martial in a week for refusing deployment spoke about her son's case. I always get quesy when politics and religion share such a close space (even when I agree with the politics), but this totally appealed to my liberal, social justice Catholic religious foundation. I really enjoyed attending services at a chruch that welcomed everyone (even atheists!).

After the service, we went for lunch at a tacquiera, and headed back to the hotel to check out. We were back in LA by 5 pm, and had dinner in Culver City at Tender Greens. Check out the New York Times website: their list of top ten most emailed articles includes yet another feature on my hip and undiscovered backyard (Culver City). We took a short walk around CC after dinner, then R. dropped me off at home.

Weekends like this really leave me feeling refreshed and quite lucky. I live in an amazing part of the country, I have good company, and the resources to enjoy myself. Life is good.