Summer Vacation

Sand and I headed down to San Francisco yesterday. It was just a day trip, but it did what we hoped it would. Temperatures out in the Valley are for the moment still pushing very close to 100, and there is always promise of cooler temps along the coast. We didn't plan to do much. We're rubes, we admit it. Our idea of a day in the city means we walk around till we find a bar that we like and have a drink. Then we walk around till we find another bar that we like and have a drink. Then we go to our favorite bar, have some drinks, and eat calamari.

Our twist on the routine today was to take the ferry to Sausalito to begin our walk around. We wanted to feel the sea wind and challenge the rush of the tide...at least as well as that can be done on a commuter ferry. But the Bay did not disappoint.  As we pulled out of the dock for our trip across the Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge came into view, or what you could see of it behind the fog that was streaming into the Bay.

Sausalito was on the other side of the fog.  As the ferry steamed forward, the temperature began to drop. We were in the open air seating on the deck in the nose of the ferry, and it felt like we had sailed into the arctic. It had worked out better than I had planned. Just when I couldn't feel my ears anymore, we emerged on the far side of the fog, and Sausalito came into view.

Looking back toward The City, all that was visible was the tops of the buildings.

Sausalito itself was clear and pleasantly warm. We strolled around a bit, and settled into the Seven Seas Restaurant, not because it looked like a fine restaurant, but because it had pizza on display in window. Turns out it really wasn't bad, and the pizza was in fact very good. It reminded us a bit of the pizza we used to get from a pizza joint back in the town we lived in in Pennsylvania. That, by the way, is a compliment.

A glass of Chablis, a little Pinot Noir, and back onto the ferry for the ride back through the fog to San Francisco, and our ultimate destination, Sinbad's.

Sinbad's has been our lounge of choice since 1988 when we moved to California. We stumbled upon it when we were hungry, liked the views, and fell madly in love with the calamari tempura. You know what they say: you never forget your first squid. And it's true! At least for us. I had never had calamari before Sinbad's, and as it turns out, it was and still is the best I've ever tasted. It made me a calamari fan, and I will almost always order the fried calamari appetizer from a restaurant if it's offered, always hoping that it will be as good as Sinbad's. Alas, in more than twenty years of sampling, I've never found anything to compare. (There is a place in Santa Cruz that comes a close second, but it is second.) We settled in, ordered the first round, soaked in the views of the Bay and contemplated the right time for ordering the calamari.

A woman sitting next to us was talking to her friends, telling them she had gone to the A's game last night, and wouldn't be joining them tomorrow because it was opera night. Next week was out the question also since she would be in London to visit a friend -- and you know how Heathrow can be -- and how strict they were in Paris if you didn't get your ticket before you boarded the streetcars.

I considered telling her that we in fact had already purchased our tickets for the Weird Al Yankovich Alpocalypse Tour, but it's not my style to play one up-manship when it's that easy.