Theme Golden Gate

I spent some time in Golden Gate Park, which has a name that is a little misleading, because the park is not at the Golden Gate bridge.
The park is quite big and beautiful, with different kinds of sports activities, as well as beautiful nice places to walk.

Continuing on the theme, I drove along the coastline to the bridge, and admired the views - with a few zillions of tourists.
My stomack told me that it was time for food, so I drove to Sausalito and had lunch/dinner at the Spinnaker, which is fancy and has a great view over the sea towards SanFran, but the food is over-priced.
Oh, so one restaurant that I forgot from my story about the never-ending restaurant/party schedule.
And just when I was coming close to home, Antoine called me and said that he is throwing a sushi night, so I grabbed a wine bottle and drove back towards Antoine��s place for more food. We talked about various things with the guys who had arrived for the GDC conference, and one of the things was crime in Oakland and East Bay, but also about the fact that not much was happening when it comes to crime in SanFran.
So I drew Petri to the Clift hotel, turned around the corner - and was stuck in a crime scene with lots of police cars, and police with drawn guns in their hands. Apparently some drug dealer in a car or something that they had stopped, who seemed a little dangerous. But this was the first time I had seen anything related to crime really happening.

Some restaurants and parties

I had dinner at the Firefly on February 12th, which was a very nice place on 4288 24th street.
I remember this Korean restaurant just around the corner of the Fillmore mostly from the fact that I was sitting there all night waiting for a telco to end - which it didn��t - so I missed the concert with Robin Trower (whom I��ve never seen live). Fuuuuuu...n - not!
The Fly Trap on 606 Folsom St was definitely much better than what the name indicated. We had dinner there with some friends on Feb 19th, before goin to the Nokia GDC party at the Supper Club on 657 Harrison st.
The day after that it was time to go to The Grand Cafe with some (potential) customers, and after that to the Great American Music Hall to see Skid Row at a sponsored (i.e., all drinks free - again) party.
When I came home in the morning I saw this sign in the elevator, and I had a good laugh.
The day after that - or later that day - Paul from Meetro threw a party at their HQ on 78 1st, same procedure as the earlier nights that week. Pretty cool crowd.
The day after thay (Feb 22nd), a blogger called Ewan MacLead threw a party at his amazing penthouse apartment up on Nob Hill. Much less people, more sophisticated, but very good, too.
The day after that it was time for dinner with friends at the Maverick (3316 17th st), which is probably one of the best restaurants I can remember :-) so far. No, seriously, very good, not only "price-performance".
And the day after that dinner with Paavo from Valve at the Grand Pu Bah.
And the day after that Tuomo was in town with his sons, so we went out with him and Antoine to the Asqew Grill on 3350 Steiner, a place with some reasonably priced food, for a change.
The signs in the restroom were priceless!

And the day after that to Grand Pu Bah again, this time for drinks, related to Markus��(3rd from the right) farewell party.

And after that, well, for some reason an old man was suddenly feeling very tired. But it was worth it, quite a fanastic 1.5 weeks, or so (or whatever :-)

A walk in the neighbourhood

Funny cars.




Historical landmarks.
AT&T Park.

Driving back

The only thing that I had decided was to not take the I-5 back to SanFran, otherwise I hadn��t really planned where to drive on my way back. What I did was head towards Solvang, a funny little "Danish" town outside Santa Barbara. It��s hugely popular (i.e., lots of tourists), but still quite charming, mimicking a Danish town. And the drive there is quite nice, through some mountains with windy roads. - And I received some flashbacks from 2002, when we were here with Sirpa and the Palms.
The town was so crowded when I arrived that it seemed impossible to find parking, so I decided to go somewhere a little outside the town, which turned out to be the golf course.
There was a place called the River Grill, where I decided to have my lunch. A pretty relaxed and nice place, actually.
And people weren��t only fanatic about golf...
I took a look at the map of the GPS and decided to drive to a place, where the 101 was reaching the ocean, before turning inlands. That place turned out to be Avila Beach.
It was pretty amazing, like suddenly coming to a resort somewhere far south. People lying on the beach, enjoying drinks in the bar, and just having a good time. And it looked liked all kinds of interesting places like Hearst Castle where within reach, too. Pretty cool place.

And that was the last stop. After that it was just driving, trying to avoid the worst holes in the roads :-) and adding miles to the meter. I was back in SanFra around 9pm that evening.

A day in LA

The first thing I realized in the morning was that it was so much warmer than in SanFran, around 75-80F in the day, and down to about 60-65F in the evening. The weather being sunny, it felt really great.

At the waterfront the temperature did fall down to 60F+, though. The other one striking me was the distances and the traffic. I��m not sure if I could live with that, having to commute to work for ages. But at least the gas was cheaper, almost 50c, actually!
The Finnish Consulate was in a pretty fancy building in Beverly Hills, and my next stop was in the center of Beverly Hills, where I walked around and saw all the fashion shops and exclusive stuff available.
I stopped by at the La Salsa Restaurant, where I had a good burrito (I normally don��t like burritos). After I had parked I learned that there are cheap/free city parking, too...
Next stop was Santa Monica, with all the people at the beach showing off themselves and being (or looking like being) very active. But definitely lots to see, and a nice stroll.

Went to Shutters on the Beach Lobby Lounge, situated in a very nice, old building, with a great view. It felt like going 100 years back in time when sitting there.

Last stop was Venice, and Hal��s Bar and Grill. I had very good lambshops, as well as vanilla ice cream with champagne strawberries. And a Shiraz from Down Under (Barossa Valley).
Life could be worse!

Driving towards LA

The reason why I needed to go to LA was that I had to renew my passport, and there are Finnish consulates only in NY, Washington DC, and LA. Since I needed a change - and some miles on my car - I decided to drive there.
According to Google Maps it would be a 372 miles drive ��� about 5 hours 39 mins, and it actually took about 6 hours, including breaks and everything. Anyway, first I had a tax consultation meeting in Palo Alto, which was in the right direction, and then I continued driving south at around 2.30pm.
After San Jose, when moving from 101 to 152, the road turned inlands, and there was suddenly quite beautiful landscape around the San Luis Reservoir. And then the road started to rise, and rise, quite high.
I-5 was even more boring than what I had been told, and my GOS told my to just drive straight foreward for the next 182 miles. Lots and lots of trucks, and quite a lot of other traffic, too. And damn the road was in bad shape. Seriously, I thought I��d loose all my teeth and and my guts when hitting some of the holes. So I decided to drive on the left lane (out of two in the same direction) as much as possible. I stopped after about 2 hours in... and continued towards Los Angeles. Once again, the road started rising, this time a huge one with 6 lanes, or so.

In the end my Garmin took me to my hotel in Universal City, where I arrived around 8.30pm. I had a very nice and spacey room quite high up at the Hilton, which had a pool and all kinds of other things - that I didn��t have time to use... I popped in at Universal Studios for a while, had a glass of wine in the hotel bar, and went to bed.

Lots of restaurants

One thing that we did a lot during the week was going to restaurants. We went to MoMo��s on Friday, a place Sirpa likes - not only for the Creme Brulee.

We went to the Beach Chalet a Saturday, a place we visited together many years ago, when Sirpa was in SFO for the first time. No massive Margaritas this time :-)
On Sunday we were out in the wine country and went to a charming place called Glenn Ellen Inn, which had a quite funny and over-polite polish butler.
Earlier during the day we were at Sand Dollar Restaurant Bar, which is a great place for brunch, BTW.
On Monday we walked to CoCo500, a place that was very popular during the dot.com era - but also survived it. I��m not that impressed by the place, but it is stylish, and the food is good, although the "price/performance" is not that good.
On Tuesday... oh, yeah, we went out with Niko and Sirpa to Roy��s, a place I used to go to when I was travelling to SanFran in my previous work. I like their Hawaian Fusion style.
On Wednesday we were out in Palo Alto, and had dinner at the Fish Market. I��ve been there a couple of times, and ����m not that impressed, but I still go back there. I don��t know why....
Thursday... Gordon Biersch, a place a few blocks from me with decent food, lots of people, but always a free spot somewhere around the bar, if nowehere else. And I always find a place to park.
On Friday we went to Grand Pu Bah, which is just around the corner from my offices, this close to where I live, too. A quite good Thai place.

Saturday and XYZ in the W hotel. It��s a popular place for people to meet up and continue drinking into the night, but the restaurant is quite good, too. In fact, it��s is the forst restaurant that I have been in for quite a while that served something that I actually thought was good. And that was their dessert, a truly fabulous cheese plate.
And that - I think - concludes our week out in restaurants. Phew!

Oh, one last note. I have to find out what this thing about wine prices is. I��ve written about Californian wines, which can be quite expensive even if they are quite crappy. Then sometimes it��s quite the opposite. Like here, a decent Australian wine. The normal price in the Wholefoods store was $8.99, but now they were on sale - so you received two bottles for $8.99 instead. That��s $4.50/bottle, which is ���3.10/bottle - now, that is cheap! Let��s hope it��s still drinkable i.e., that it hasn��t been in the window (i.e., sun) for the last couple of years...