pen_grunt | If you're going to San Francisco...

I think it's a rule, all travel posts about San Francisco have to have that title. I rather like San Fran--you can get anything you'd like at almost any time. Palestinian food with a French dessert and a hippie wheatgrass chaser? They have it here.

We went to this really, really cool restaurant: Gary Danko (oooh, celebrity chef and all...faaaaaancy). It's one of those with multiple courses that are perfectly portioned and have really good, quality, fresh ingredients. Service was awesome, if a bit excessive. We literally had 8 people wait on us: The host, the water-pourer, the drink-taker, the plate-clearer, the silverware setter-outter, the waitress, the drink bringer and the meal server. I had the white truffle risotto, the roasted lobster and the 5 preparations of apple. Fancy-shmancy. They brought us an amuse-bouche before our meal, complimentary dessert cookie-tart-things, and sent me home with a package of pumpkin-cheese bread, "For breakfast--sweets for the sweet lady," said the waitress (I heard her say that to the next table over too). I'm not sharing my free bread.

You can also find most any type of person in San Fran. For instance, we were driven home by the cab driver-version of Jeff Spicolli. Seriously. Long blond hair, surfer dude attitude (yes, he called us "dude"), whacked out stoner speech and attitude, and (I'm not kidding here) his acoustic guitar beside him in the passenger seat. He offered to take us on a "tour" of the city. We declined politely, thinking that we would be lucky if he remembered what hotel we told him we were at by the end of the cab ride.

And now I'm in the hotel overlooking the financial district. It's really a beautiful city at night, all told. During the day? I have *some* reservations.