[This is part 2. See part 1, 3 or 4]
So my first week in San Francisco is over, I was looking at things in the city, except for one meeting outside of San Francisco in Cupertino. I rented a car to get there and I’m glad I planned for two hours of driving time instead of only one, because traffic on that highway was horrible, I guess the three-car accident during the morning rush hour didn’t help. Other than that, driving a car is fun here, wide roads and everything :-)
My meeting was over before noon and since I had the car for the rest of the day I went to Santa Cruz for lunch. One place I highly recommend there is the Saturn Cafe. (You’ll notice that most of my restaurant tips in this and the following blog entries focus on places which have good vegetarian food :-). On the way back, I took highway 1 for the scenic coastal views [Pictures]. Last time I was here in California I did this trip in the other direction, going from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
In general I used public transportation to get around San Francisco, which works fine. There are enough options, but at first it’s not quite easy to figure out when and where the bus lines run, especially the ones going out of town.
People tell me I was lucky with the weather so far. All sunshine, not a single day of fog or rain... There is one thing I keep forgetting though: It is *cold* here in the summer in San Francisco. I mentioned this to friends and was amused to hear the same quote independently from two different people on the same day: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”
I’m wearing sweaters now whenever I go out, but I know that if the cold air and chilly wind outdoors doesn’t get me, then the insane air-conditioning everywhere will do it instead...
One of the things I didn’t get to see last time was the Ghirardelli square with the chocolate store. I bought a big pile of chocolate so I can do some in-depth studies and comparisons with Swiss chocolate when I’m back home. All in the interest of scientific study :-)
I think the highlight of the week was a Segway city tour. I always wanted to ride a Segway and this was the perfect opportunity. It was way better than I expected, after 5 minutes I was totally hooked. It looks really dorky, but moving around with this engineering marvel is just so much fun. The tour guide was also pretty witty so I highly recommend these guys. I want to do it again when I’m in one of the other cities I’ll be visiting on this trip. [Pictures]
The tour doesn’t actually show a lot of San Francisco because Segways are not allowed on streets or sidewalks in the city. Instead we get to see a lot of the waterfront including the Marina District, Palace of Fine Arts, etc. That spot is really beautiful and has lots of photo opportunities so I decide to come back later (unfortunately without Segway)... [Pictures]
One evening I visited friends who moved to the US to live and work in Foster City near SF, a nice place. It was interesting to hear their stories about some everyday-life differences between here and Switzerland. Some things are truly surprising, they live in this high-tech region of California yet the cable Internet connection broke down weeks ago and their provider just cannot fix it so they have to switch to DSL, which is also a pain to get going. Weeks of discussions with clueless support people and without Internet connection etc.
On Wednesday and Saturday there’s a farmer’s market, on Civic Plaza and at the Ferry Building, respectively. Lots of things to try and buy, mostly organic. I highly recommend a visit. There’s one place that sells nuts in all variations, including ones covered with chocolate and a few quite funky combinations.
On Sunday evening, I meet Larry Ullman in person for the first time, which is funny considering that by now we’ve written three books together, all using e-mail and iChat only. We met at the Moscone center to pre-register for the conference next week, picking up our badges and the usual goodies. By that time, we were still wondering which of the various rumors flying around would be confirmed at the keynote on Monday morning.
Some more hotel/restaurant tips:
- Mela Tandoori serves great Indian / Pakistani food. Make sure to try the garlic naan bread as side order.
- Taylor Hotel at Post and Taylor was a pleasant surprise. The rooms and the building are really old and it shows, but everything is clean, the location is excellent, just a few blocks from Union Square, and the price is unbeatable.
A friend sent me this in preparation for the keynote: :-)
P.S.: I’m uploading pictures to my snapmania.com account from time to time:
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