Dinner at Zuni on Wednesday evening was fabulous, as usual....
Peter and I always (almost always) have the roast chicken (prep time - 1 hour) and the caesar salad (which has actually seen anchovies in living memory!), and it was fabulous, as always (the restaurant has been here forever, and from the looks of it, will be here another while yet...)
Thursday was - again - Hank's day, and a glorious day it was too. As you can see, the city was wearing its spring finery...
...and Hank had found something new for us to explore, the Octagon House, one of the San Francisco originals, complete with colonial era furniture and fixings (who knew that anything had been in San Francisco that long....)
...no pictures allowed indoors, but it was an interesting piece of San Francisco history, right up Hank's alley, of course.
Our next mission was to get in to State Bird Provisions, a still-trendy restaurant that opened about 3 years ago in the Fillmore. We (that is, Hank and I) have been trying to get in ever since, but no luck with reservations. This time, we tried a different tactic - standing in line for the limited number of tables they reserve for walk-ins. Hank, I-Pad in hand, volunteered to stand in line while I took my obligatory nap. And we made it!
Here's us, in line....
....and here we are in the restaurant. It is an interesting business model, really, dim sum for white people. Their signature dish is quail (California's state bird, don't ya know, hence the name of the restaurant); that, and a limited number of other dishes can be ordered from the menu. The rest comes around on carts.
For all the chaos, the service was excellent. The quail and one or two of the other dishes were brilliant. The rest was a bit too exotic for me, although I am certainly glad to have gone. So yes, especially for those of you who are adventurous eaters, I would recommend it, but if you go, be sure you are willing to mortgage your first born. All those exotic flavours don't come cheap!!
After dinner, we were off to the theater, where we finally managed to score tickets for The Book of Mormon (we had tried twice in New York and once before in San Francisco).
No wonder it won so many Tony's!!! Choreography, music, dancers, singers, all great, and very funny! We had a wonderful time!!
Friday, Peter and I went for a long walk in Mission Bay, a newly developed area of San Francisco where industrial blight once was.
It was fascinating, really. It takes forever to get things done in San Francisco, between permits and NIMBY, but once they do it, they do a really good job.
We planned for a late - and large - lunch (the opera tonight is clocked at 5 hours and 10 minutes and starts at 6 P.M., so no dinner for us). We stopped at Towns End (fittingly enough, at the end of Townsend Street) on the waterfront, for another nice meal (sorry, I was too busy eating to take pictures). We both headed home for a nap, to prepare us for the opera.
And here we are in our finery....
The opera was Berlioz' Les Troyen, last performed in San Francisco some 40 years ago. And no wonder! It requires a cast of thousands, the chorus is on stage and singing for most of the performance, there are ballets (it is a French opera, after all), and not to mention the infamous Trojan horse. I have to say, it was fabulous, all of the above. Susan Graham outdid herself as Dido, but the other voices were all great too. If were staying any longer, I would have gotten a ticket for the next performance (even though the opera ticket cost more than my plane ticket!) However, I am leaving tomorrow, so once it will have to be! Really, for all that it was 5+ hours long, I didn't want it to be over.
Saturday, Peter and I met for brunch at Ella's, another San Francisco institution, at California and the ,Presidio. Our last "event" of the trip was the meeting of the Wagner Society, fittingly enough, on the relationship between Wagner and Berlioz (which can be summed up: they loved each other and then they loathed each other). The speaker was very knowledgeable, and it was a great talk, very well attended too.
And then I was off to the airport and the (short) trip home, which was - again as we like it - uneventful. I was home in bed by 10 P,M,, having dubbed the trip a great success!
However,one pays for one's sins, or, more to the point, for one's expensive opera tickets. I was in the office working all day Sunday (okay, I confess, I took a little time to read the New York Times), and, of course, all day today. Not much going on for the next little while - except for some emotional upheaval, which I will tell you about another time....
Peter and I always (almost always) have the roast chicken (prep time - 1 hour) and the caesar salad (which has actually seen anchovies in living memory!), and it was fabulous, as always (the restaurant has been here forever, and from the looks of it, will be here another while yet...)
Thursday was - again - Hank's day, and a glorious day it was too. As you can see, the city was wearing its spring finery...
...and Hank had found something new for us to explore, the Octagon House, one of the San Francisco originals, complete with colonial era furniture and fixings (who knew that anything had been in San Francisco that long....)
...no pictures allowed indoors, but it was an interesting piece of San Francisco history, right up Hank's alley, of course.
Our next mission was to get in to State Bird Provisions, a still-trendy restaurant that opened about 3 years ago in the Fillmore. We (that is, Hank and I) have been trying to get in ever since, but no luck with reservations. This time, we tried a different tactic - standing in line for the limited number of tables they reserve for walk-ins. Hank, I-Pad in hand, volunteered to stand in line while I took my obligatory nap. And we made it!
Here's us, in line....
....and here we are in the restaurant. It is an interesting business model, really, dim sum for white people. Their signature dish is quail (California's state bird, don't ya know, hence the name of the restaurant); that, and a limited number of other dishes can be ordered from the menu. The rest comes around on carts.
For all the chaos, the service was excellent. The quail and one or two of the other dishes were brilliant. The rest was a bit too exotic for me, although I am certainly glad to have gone. So yes, especially for those of you who are adventurous eaters, I would recommend it, but if you go, be sure you are willing to mortgage your first born. All those exotic flavours don't come cheap!!
After dinner, we were off to the theater, where we finally managed to score tickets for The Book of Mormon (we had tried twice in New York and once before in San Francisco).
No wonder it won so many Tony's!!! Choreography, music, dancers, singers, all great, and very funny! We had a wonderful time!!
Friday, Peter and I went for a long walk in Mission Bay, a newly developed area of San Francisco where industrial blight once was.
It was fascinating, really. It takes forever to get things done in San Francisco, between permits and NIMBY, but once they do it, they do a really good job.
We planned for a late - and large - lunch (the opera tonight is clocked at 5 hours and 10 minutes and starts at 6 P.M., so no dinner for us). We stopped at Towns End (fittingly enough, at the end of Townsend Street) on the waterfront, for another nice meal (sorry, I was too busy eating to take pictures). We both headed home for a nap, to prepare us for the opera.
And here we are in our finery....
The opera was Berlioz' Les Troyen, last performed in San Francisco some 40 years ago. And no wonder! It requires a cast of thousands, the chorus is on stage and singing for most of the performance, there are ballets (it is a French opera, after all), and not to mention the infamous Trojan horse. I have to say, it was fabulous, all of the above. Susan Graham outdid herself as Dido, but the other voices were all great too. If were staying any longer, I would have gotten a ticket for the next performance (even though the opera ticket cost more than my plane ticket!) However, I am leaving tomorrow, so once it will have to be! Really, for all that it was 5+ hours long, I didn't want it to be over.
Saturday, Peter and I met for brunch at Ella's, another San Francisco institution, at California and the ,Presidio. Our last "event" of the trip was the meeting of the Wagner Society, fittingly enough, on the relationship between Wagner and Berlioz (which can be summed up: they loved each other and then they loathed each other). The speaker was very knowledgeable, and it was a great talk, very well attended too.
And then I was off to the airport and the (short) trip home, which was - again as we like it - uneventful. I was home in bed by 10 P,M,, having dubbed the trip a great success!
However,one pays for one's sins, or, more to the point, for one's expensive opera tickets. I was in the office working all day Sunday (okay, I confess, I took a little time to read the New York Times), and, of course, all day today. Not much going on for the next little while - except for some emotional upheaval, which I will tell you about another time....
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