Yesterday was another perfect day in San Francisco: clear and sunny with bright blue skies and a breeze to keep the temperature reasonable. I decided to take the ferry to Sausalito and, conditions permitting, walk back to the city over the Golden Gate bridge.

First stop, the ferry terminal Saturday market, a wide array of temporary stalls on both the street side and the water side of the terminal. Pat had passed along a review of St. Benoit yogurt, and theirs was the first booth that I visited. The yogurt’s a bit expensive — $4 for a small pot including the $1.25 deposit on the decorative pottery tub that it comes in — but the review promised something special. I tucked it in my bag and moved through the terminal to check the schedules, and found that a ferry was leaving for Sausalito in 20 minutes. Perfect. I bought a ticket, then doubled back to buy a chai at Peet’s; deterred by the long line, I picked up a rye raisin rabbit (whole wheat and rye roll with raisins) from Acme Bread and made for the ferry.

As with many cities on water, San Francisco public ferries are the cheapest way to get a quick harbour tour, especially if you want to go wherever they’re going. For $7.10, the ferry leaves from just north of the Oakland Bay bridge, with views of Yerba Buena and Treasure Islands, travels up the east side of the city, then heads out across the bay, skirting to the east of Alcatraz with a great view of the Golden Gate bridge, and on past Angel Island to reach Sausalito. About 30 minutes in total, and you’re on the lovely and very touristy Sausalito waterfront.

Years ago — at least 10 — I was on a 4-day wine cruise tour out of San Francisco, where we cruised on a river boat up the Sacramento river, then up the Napa river for a local tour and another overnight at Sacramento. When we returned to San Francisco, we took the ferry over to Sausalito and climbed up to the Alta Mira hotel, which had a dining room on the terrace with a fabulous view of San Francisco and an even more fabulous wine list. With that memory in mind, I crossed the street directly by the fountain at the ferry docks in Sausalito, and found those long-ago steps leading up the side of the hill. Channeling my inner mountain goat, I climbed up, looking back occasionally for the views over the water, and finally reached the Alta Mira. Alas, in 2004 it was converted to a bed-and-breakfast with no public dining facilities, and that wine list on the terrace is gone. The very accommodating desk clerk invited me to go out on the terrace and enjoy the view; that remains the same.

I hiked back down to the water’s edge and walked along, the Golden Gate bridge in my mind although I had only a rough idea of how far it was. Amidst the usual array of tourist stores and ice cream shops, a man was creating balanced rock sculptures on the breakwall. A few kayakers were enjoying the water. Cyclists on rented bicycles, obviously from the San Francisco side, where everywhere. And tourists, tourists, tourists. I started walking in the direction of the bridge. Five miles and about 400 feet of elevation increase later, I reached the north lookout point beside the bridge, wishing that I had worn more appropriate shoes. I stopped for a brief look around and to rehydrate at a water fountain (stupidly, I didn’t carry any water), then started across the bridge.

There is a walkway on either side of the bridge: bicycles on the west (ocean) side, and pedestrians on the east (city) side. Those of us on foot have the better view, I think. The bridge is 4,200 feet across, and it’s windy enough that I had to take off my hat. The sun and wind were pretty intense; between the walk up from Sausalito and the trip across the bridge, my shoulders and nose were sunburned in spite of the 30spf that I’d applied before leaving the hotel. I walked out on the bridge, pausing frequently to snap photos and peer over the edge at the boats passing below. With only a standard height handrail, I can see why this is such a popular spot for jumpers.

Like a true engineer, a little ways out on the bridge I stopped to grasp one of the huge steel cables running up from the roadbed to the suspension cables. It vibrated in my hand, strummed by the constant wind blowing through the strait. I gawked upwards at the towers and the cables, having much more time to do so than when I’ve driven across the bridge in the past. Some drivers obviously had a problem with that as well; I witnessed one of what was likely a number of rear-end collisions on the bridge that day, due to either or both of the parties looking up instead of ahead.

I reached the city side of the bridge, and knew that I wasn’t walking any further for a while. I hopped on a local bus headed for Fort Mason, figuring that I’d walk from there to Fisherman’s Wharf. It was a lovely walk along from Fort Mason, although a bit further than I’d anticipated with my already sore feet, but I did pass by a bit of sand beach that I didn’t even know existed, complete with kids paddling in the water to escape the heat.

Fisherman’s Wharf was a zoo of tourists, and I couldn’t get away from there fast enough. I knew that the cable cars would be crammed, so headed for the F car — historic electric streetcars that run along Embarcadero to Market, then up Market. I figured that I could hop off at the ferry terminal just before it made its turn onto Market, and walk the short distance to the Hilton from there. There was a car waiting, and I hopped on to find it over-crowded with people who mostly seemed to know each other. My fare was waved away, I have no idea why, and we departed a few minutes later for a crowded but laughing trip along Embarcadero. I hopped off at the ferry terminal, went in and finally got my masala chai latte from Peet’s, and finished my afternoon outside on a bench watching the ferry dock where I had departed more than five hours earlier.

I shot this video clip today just as I started walking over the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. Note the sailboat in the beginning part of the clip, unable to make any headway against the wind and current under the bridge in spite of being in full sail:

Still Friday night here in San Francisco, and I just came back from a small dinner at Jeanty at Jack’s, just a few blocks from my hotel and recommended by the friend who I had met earlier for drinks. I didn’t feel like a full meal, so I skipped the steak frites (actually, entrecôte), the cassoulet and even the sole meunière in favour of the terrine de lapin and the tomato soup, accompanied by a glass of Caillou Côtes du Rhône.

The terrine was fatty but in a good, buttery way. It was served with a small mound of a slaw-like salad of apple and celery root matchsticks with a slightly mustard-y dressing that tasted of something not quite right — flour used for thickening? The plate was dressed with a swirl of mustard, darker and less tangy than a Dijon so as to not overpower the mild terrine, and small, tart cornichons made a nice contrast with the rabbit. It was served with fresh baguette slices.

I grew up on Campbell’s tomato soup, and although it has a nice homey feel to it, I’d never consider ordering tomato soup in a restaurant, except that the friend who recommended the restaurant said that “the tomato bisque in a pastry puff is worth the trip alone”. Jeanty’s tomato soup is from a completely different planet than Campbell’s. A bisque, really; cream-laden and both comforting and exquisite in the mouth, both in texture and taste. And the pièce de résistance: it’s served in a miniature soup tureen with a cap of puff pastry sealed all around and baked in place. I gently pushed through the domed cap, dipping the pieces of pastry in the creamy bisque. OMG.

The chocolates and Rioja will have to wait for tomorrow.

I live in a city with amazing food (Toronto), but there’s something about San Francisco that just makes me want to eat all day long. I drove up here from Silicon Valley late yesterday afternoon and am staying at the Hilton Financial District, which is nestled between Chinatown and North Beach (the Italian area), just a few minutes walk from the Embarcadero at the ferry terminal. I immediately whipped out the hotel local guide, and saw that the ferry terminal has been converted into bunch of upscale market/food shops/cafes, and decided to check it out.

I didn’t arrive there until after 7pm so a lot of the shops were closed, but it was a nice place to walk around and take some photos. I tried for the fish tacos at Taylor’s, but they were out of fish for the day; I’ll have to try this another day, since I can’t seem to find any place in Toronto that makes fish tacos. I settled in for dinner at the white Italian marble bar at Ferry Plaza Seafood, sitting indoors facing the bay through the large windows rather than at a table outside, since it was starting to cool out there. This is a combo restaurant and fish market, with the long counter of fish for sale right behind me as I sat at the bar. They offer three types of chowder — New England clam, Manhattan clam, and fish — and I ordered a cup of the New England clam chowder that was served up with 2 minutes. The clams were a bit firm, but not yet chewy, and the taste was sublimely creamy, paired with a chunk of fresh sourdough bread. I ordered a glass of Tiefenbrunner Pinot Grigio (Italian) and waited (but not long) for the main course: a seared ahi salad. The salad was greens, grape tomatoes and roasted potatoes with three significant slabs of seared ahi laid over it: definitely more than I needed, although I did manage to put it all away. The fish had been prepared in advance so was completely cold — many seared ahi salads that I’ve had use freshly-seared fish so that it’s warm on the outside while cool on the inside — and had been rolled in white and black sesame seeds. Very tasty, although the salad dressing was a bit lackluster, and I’d be hard-pressed to even say what the dressing was. All in all, a satisfactory and filling dinner.

I wanted to hit the ferry terminal again during peak hours, so I headed down there this morning around 11 to check out the shops and have lunch. I thought that I’d be back to Taylor’s for those tacos, but decided instead on two fresh rolls from Acme Bread, a slice of pecorino from Cowgirl Creamery and a masala chai latte from Peet’s, eaten on a bench at the water’s edge. The rosemary roll, although fresh and tasty, had not a hint of rosemary in it; the olive roll, however, was nicely flecked with green olives. The pecorino, I confess, was Italian, not local, in spite of some of the nice locally-made cheeses in the shop; it just caught my eye on the way in, and was a firm enough cheese to eat on my lap on a bench without making a mess as well as having all that sheep’s-milk goodness in it. I finished off lunch with a 2-scoop cup from Ciao Bella Gelato: one scoop of guava sorbet, and one of pear sorbet. The guava was lovely, tropical on the nose and the tongue, but the pear was outstanding: intense, definitely Bartlett, and with a graininess on the palette that was just like eating a fresh pear, only 100x more so.

Since I had an early drink planned with a friend and would likely have a late dinner on my own, I picked up a few things for a snack in my room. A visit to Farm Fresh To You yielded a package of chili-lemon almonds and a selection of olives: some Mediterranean-style black olives aged for 18 months, plus green olives stuffed with almonds, and some stuffed with blue cheese. As I sit here now and nibble on these, I think that they should all be declared illegal for being just too good. I also picked up a 2003 Castillo Labastida Crianza Rioja from the Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant, although I had a glass of wine left in a bottle of Aussie Shiraz from earlier in the week so I haven’t opened this yet.

The best is yet to be tasted, however: I stopped by Recchiuti and selected four perfect chocolates to enjoy at the end of the day: one star anise and pink peppercorn, one cardamom, one cassis strata, and one tarragon and grapefruit. Given the two speciality chocolatiers in this one market, I think that Ghirardelli’s is seeing a bit of competition locally.

I also picked up a jar of truffle salt from Far West Fungi, to be sprinkled as a finish on anything from meat to vegetables to popcorn (although sparingly, at $24 for a small jar). I tasted this in the shop, and it has an exquisite truffle flavour from real truffles as well as the faux-truffle flavouring that goes into most truffle oils.

Tomorrow, I definitely walk some of the San Francisco hills, or I’m not going to be able to fit in the airplane seat going home next week.

I’m thoroughly enjoying my 3 free days in San Francisco between conferences (if you can consider a day where I spend 2 hours on conference calls and another 2 hours on a client report to still be a free day): the weather is perfect and I’m staying at a lovely hotel in a great location.

I did have a strange and unexpected wake-up call this morning: a 4.2 scale earthquake centred across the bay in Oakland, but big enough to wake me out of a dead sleep at 4:42am. Everything shook for about 20 seconds, and the Hilton actually creaked — I’m sure that it’s built to do that in an earthquake (sweat) !

Here’s how it goes:

1. Book a Toronto-San Francisco flight on Air Canada’s website, allowing them to route you through Calgary.
2. Check in the night before the flight and notice with some trepidation that you only have 50 minutes between flights. Reassure yourself that they probably don’t have US customs in Calgary (like they do in every other major airport in Canada) so you can check your bag directly through from Toronto to San Francisco without having to wait for it and recheck it in Calgary.
3. The morning of the flight, awaken early with a slight state of panic about the Calgary 50-minute stopover issue. Call Air Canada, to be told that you do have to clear customs there, but that the time is sufficient since it’s a relatively small airport.
4. Get to the airport with a suitcase that’s the maximum carry-on size (normally checked), plus a computer bag and a purse. Decide to carry it all on and lug it through security and out to the gate.
5. Notice that another Air Canada flight (United codeshare) leaves for Calgary 45 minutes before your flight, hike over to that gate to check it out.
6. Be told that in spite of the fact that Air Canada has put you on a too-tight connection, you have to pay $50 to change flights, and you have to go to the customer service desk 25 gates away to do that.
7. With only 15 minutes before the flight leaves, quickly hoof it down to the customer service desk, toting suitcase + computer bag + purse, to be told that the flight has already closed its doors.
8. Hike back to the gate and notice the gate agent with a slightly smarmy smile, and resist the urge to beat her up for sending you off on a fool’s errand.
9. Get on your original flight and heave all the luggage into the overhead bin.
10. In Calgary, arrive at the end of concourse A. Get the luggage down, jog all the way out the concourse and towards concourse C. Note the people waiting around for their luggage on the way, and offer a silent prayer of thanks that you didn’t check luggage.
11. Get through US customs, then jog all the way down to the end of concourse C to the San Francisco departure gate.
12. Repeat step 9.
13. Burn many extra calories in frustration as the flight waits for another 45 minutes for transferring passengers.

Between this and the Air Canada diet plan (have you seen their food offerings lately??), you should have no problem getting into shape for that week on the beach. Of course, you might want to fly a different airline to get to your vacation destination on time.

Zipcar, which I have started using in the past couple of months and greatly prefer over the time-wasting experience of a regular rental car, has just dropped their rates in Toronto: it’s now $10.50/hour or $69/day for their baseline cars, or $12.50/$87.50 if you want to drive a Mini.

This price drop puts them well within striking distance of the price of a regular rental car: normally, I could rent a car for a day in Toronto from Budget for about $50 plus gas, but that’s because I have a gold Visa card that covers the extra insurance; without that, it would be about $70/day plus gas.

If I were doing a multi-day rental, I’d probably go back to Budget, but for the occasional “I need a car now, for a few hours”, I’ll stick with Zipcar and appreciate the new lower rates.

When I arrived in Toronto from Boston today, the customs process was a bit odd. Only gone for three days, I had no checked luggage and nothing to declare, and I filled out the customs form as usual: checked “business” as the purpose of my trip, the “no” to all the questions about if I were bringing back this or that. The customs agent looked at it, went wild with a red marker, circling several of my responses, then asked if I was bringing anything back. Uh, no, that’s what I put on the form. Any business materials (which usually means things like marketing materials)? Nope. Did I have a laptop? Yes… Off she went with the red marker again, and when I walked off with my form, I noticed that she had changed one of my “no” responses to “yes”, that being the one asking if I was bringing any business goods into the country, whether or not for resale, and wrote “laptop” below.

WTF?

I’m not a customs expert, but I thought that “goods” meant things that I was importing into the country, not the laptop that I left with three days ago. And if that constitutes “goods”, what about my Blackberry? My camera? The pack of mints in my purse? As far as I’m concerned, these are all my personal belongings that I carry with me everywhere, no different than my wallet and a paper notebook.

I didn’t, of course, question her; even if she was wrong, there’s never anything good that’s going to come out of arguing with a border guard.

Thanks to Jevon MacDonald and Priceline, I’m in the Hilton at Boston Logan airport for $65/night: regular price about 4 times that. First time that I’ve used Priceline, I was always a bit wary of the “name your price” option, but when I specified the area and the minimum number of stars, I realized that I’d be staying at either this hotel or the airport Hyatt, either of which were completely acceptable. Jevon clued me in that $65 was the price to bid (I have no idea how he knew that, but have since discovered some websites that collect recently winning Priceline bid amounts), and suddenly I’m paying less for 3 nights than I would have for 1 night at the Westin across the harbour where the Enterprise 2.0 conference is going on. I can certainly afford cab fare, or the inconvenience of the subway, for the price difference.

I’ll definitely be using Priceline again, although it is completely prepaid so no last-minute cancellations as you might have with a regular reservation.

I don’t know how they do it, but it’s completely silent in this room — my laptop fan is the loudest noise that I can hear. I’m facing the city rather than the runways, but I still thought that there’d be some level of flight noise. I’ve heard only one plane taxiing, and that one was practically under my window. New hotel, ergonomic desk chair, wifi (although not free), nice linens on the bed, bathrobes in the closet; I can definitely get used to this.

I used Expedia for the first time when I travelled to Las Vegas recently: they got me the airfare and hotel at the same price as I could have independently, but threw in a room upgrade and two free spa passes, so overall a great deal. After the trip, they requested that I write a review, which I did, as follows:

Hotel Review: I’ve stayed at Caesar’s Palace several times over the years when in Las Vegas on business, and found some of the rooms a bit shabby. However, they’ve been undergoing some renovations, and my room in the Palace Tower was top notch. It appeared to be fairly recently renovated, and the decor was very nice. The bed was dressed with high quality linens and a duvet rather than the standard polyester hotel bedspread. The bathroom was large, including both a jacuzzi tub and a separate shower stall, although there were surprisingly few bath towels: enough for one, but it would have been marginal if I hadn’t been staying alone. I also had a chance to visit the new Qua Spa, which was great. I used the Roman baths, steam room, ice room and sauna, then lounged around and had tea and fruit — decadent! Since I had a day free at the end of my business trip, I spent some time at the pools, and they’re great, although it’s hard to find a shady spot and it gets very hot in the afternoon. I ate dinner at 808 and was a bit disappointed: the highly-recommended “deconstructed ahi roll” was oily and not as tasty as I had expected, although the mahi mahi main course was delicious. The service was what you would expect from a high-end restaurant, and the wine list was adequate although not overwhelming.

A couple of days ago, I received the following response:

Thank you for your feedback. However, your review, which is included below, needs a few revisions before we can accept it. Please make sure you:

• Write in English
• Don’t write in all caps
• Don’t mention specific prices or room rates
• Don’t reference other hotels

WTF? As far as I can tell, my review is all in English and properly capitalized, and I don’t mention rates or refer to other hotels. Unless some idiot at Expedia doesn’t know that the Palace Tower and the Qua Spa are both part of Caesar’s Palace…