Tenant / Owner Evening

We had a lovely evening with the owners of the condo where we're living. Vickie and Gil are doing much the same as we - renting their home to us and enjoying living in Carmel Valley as we are doing here in San Francisco. We met at a 42nd Street Moon Theater Jazz Review featuring well-known (but not to us) Broadway singer/dancer Karen Ziemba, in which many old-time songs with great lyrics were sung. Then we had an excellent dinner at the Vietnamese restaurant Le Colonial http://lecolonialsf.com/, where we enjoyed the camaraderie (and wonderful food) together.

Beautiful day, beautiful sunset

Just gorgeous and lovely today in San Francisco, as evidenced by this beautiful sunset, photo taken from our apartment towards the Golden Gate bridge to Sausalito.

Chinatown Walking Tour

Bill and I will start training as City Guides in a couple of weeks; classes run for six full Saturdays over the next three months. We understand that there are terrific speakers in addition to training, and we're really looking forward to starting. http://www.sfcityguides.org/ When classes are almost complete we will be assigned a specific tour from a list that we submit as our preferred tours, and mentored before we start guiding our own tour.

It so happens that our neighbors are both City Guides, and we took Kay's tour today of Chinatown. She gave us lots of history and took us to some of the alleys and by-ways of Chinatown where China customs are very strong. We also went into a couple of food markets on Stockton Avenue where it felt like we we back in Tokyo with crowded stores selling live fish, turtles, frogs, even birds. Kay also took us four flights up to the incense air-filled Tin Now Temple crowded with many people offering paper items to a (shrine) fire to take to their deceased loved ones. We toured one of the specialty shops devoted to selling these paper items - shirts, shoes, houses, radios, jewelry, even mobile phones - all paper. After our tour, Kay and her husband Harry and Bill and I had excellent dim sum at the gigantic New Asia Restaurant.

http://www.sfnewasia.com/

Sunset Walk at Chrissy Field

Enjoyed a beautiful sunset walk at Chrissy Field. We started in bright sun at 4:30 and by 5:00 fog drifted in just as a cruise ship was passing under the Golden Gate bridge.

Best Pizza in San Francisco

Our vote for the best pizza in San Francisco is at Caffe BaoNecci in North Beach (Green & Columbus). This is a small family-run restaurant (they're from Lucca) that serves delicious (very) thin-crust pizza. I asked if they would make us a plain crust, brush it with olive oil, salt it and serve in pieces. I've had this many times in Montecatini (near Lucca) and have craved it often, and BaoNecci's was made to a 'T'. Bill thinks the eggplant parmesan here is delicious as well.
http://www.caffebaonecci.com/caffebaonecci/Welcome.html
Rose's Cafe on Union Street (Cow Hollow) also has delicious thin-crust pizza, and they too made the plain oiled and salted crust for us, which was almost as good as BaoNecci - Rose's crust just slightly thicker but still very thin. Rose's Cafe is very a popular restaurant.
http://www.rosescafesf.com/
We also had pizza at Tony's Pizza Napoletana in North Beach (Union & Stockton) which we liked, a little thicker pizza that we're used too, also a very popular restaurant and always crowded.
http://www.tonyspizzanapoletana.com/
We have yet to go back to Tomasso's in North Beach which we ate at a few years ago, and to A16 on Chestnut Street in the Marina, which was recommended to us.
http://tommasos.com/
http://www.a16sf.com/
These are just pizza restaurants; we have other Italian favorites, too, which I'll write about soon.

Whow! 4.1 Earthquake

Having weathered an earthquake on the 40th floor when we lived in Tokyo in 2006, we're now on the 16th floor of another high rise in San Francisco and hit with an earthquake earlier this afternoon. Swayed for about 15 seconds, but the building withstood the 4.1 earthquake (centered just south of San Jose). Glad the high rise is built on a granite hill.

Painted Ladies

Yesterday we enjoyed a Painted Ladies City Guides walking tour on Alamo Square. The picture postcard location for these 'ladies' is famous, but we saw many more beautifully restored Victorians, both Edwardian and 'stick' style, some with as many as 23 colors. We were told by the guide that some exterior painting jobs can cost from $60K to $120K, needed approximately every five years due to sun and fog exposure!

A little too 'comfortable'?

Had a good evening New Year's Eve at Mary Jane's with Pat and Don; stayed overnight in order to stay off the road traveling back to San Francisco, and all enjoyed brunch at the Frischmann's. Pat and Don gave me a birthday gift of candy from the 50s - Clark bar, Mary Janes, Dots on a (paper) strip - and lots more sugar memories from childhood. The Lucky Strike CANDIES look just a little too comfortable in hand for those of us who may or may not have been smokers in the past!