If You're Going To San Francisco...

As many of you know, I traveled to San Francisco last week to attend a conference with Nikki, and then spend the weekend with Niki and Derek. I've gotten a lot of fun out of talking about what I did with Nikki, and what I did with Niki, to random people who get confused easily.

The flight out was fairly uneventful - we flew through Denver, which rather bumpy while landing but otherwise OK. The Denver airport is rather nice - good food, mailboxes inside the terminal which made Netflix DVD-returning easy, and easy to navigate. Except for one thing - this:

Yeah. Ew.

So, we arrived in San Francisco safely, and had a cab driver who didn't try to kill us on the way to the hotel, which was a nice change from the last time we went.

On the way into the city, we saw what appeared to be a big accident, but was just people filming something for a show called Trauma. Keep an eye out for it, and for an accident scene that looks like this:

We arrived at the hotel, which was absolutely gorgeous:

In addition to the gigantic room, the rooms had gorgeous bathrooms, including a toilet phone, which reminds me of when Joey Tribbiani had a phone in his new apartment and Monica requested that he never call her from there.

This was the view of Nob Hill from my hotel room window:

And the view of the hotel terrace garden from Nikki's window:

That night, we walked down a very steep hill to this dining establishment:

Neither of us had the "Little Pancakes," but we did have very good Kobe beef cheeseburgers. After dinner, we were exhausted, so we trekked up the mountain back to our hotel and went to bed.

Wednesday, the first day of the conference, was pretty uneventful during the day. I did manage to lock myself outside trying to mail something at this corner - Nikki had to rescue me.

That evening, Niki and Derek picked us up and drove to this restaurant in Little Italy. Derek and I found it in a guidebook while we were waiting for Niki. Everything in it was made with garlic. I like garlic.

The inside was decorated with two of my favorite things - chianti and garlic. Seen here is the chianti.

They even had garlic ice cream, which Derek and I ordered and Nikki bravely tasted, and then took pictures of me eating.

Thursday we took a cable car to Fisherman's Wharf.

The view from the cable car as we approached the pier:
Once we got off the cable car, we headed toward Pier 39. We stopped by In-N-Out Burger to take pictures, just as we'd done the last time we came to this area:

and Nikki made friends with a pirate:

We made it to Fisherman's Wharf, and saw the pretty sign there.

Since we didn't visit Alcatraz this time, I took a picture of it from the Wharf.

It was very, very windy, too, as evidenced by these trees.

I posed with some fake sea lions...

...and saw a real one too. I wanted to take this one home with me, but he was too big.

We ate dinner at the Pier Market at Pier 39. I had steak and shrimp, and while the shrimp was great, the steak disproved my theory that seafood restaurants always have good steak. It wasn't bad, but it was nothing to write home about. But the shrimp was definitely good, and the waiter was very friendly and helpful. I would recommend it...just avoid land creatures.

We also saw this awning leading to my own personal hell - a shark touch pool.On our way back to the cable car, Nikki met a crab:

I made friends with a frog statue who looked like he was trying to punch me.

Finally, we retired to our hotel for the evening.

Friday, Nikki left after breakfast to return home, and Niki came to get me after the morning session of the conference. Stay tuned for details in the second installment of the story!