Free at last!

I woke up at 7am again and walked up to the Fairmont for the last morning session of seminars at the conference. Thank God that was the last time I had to scale those hills - some being so steep they can only be navigated on all fours - but at least by now I had worked out the route which had the least incline per metre.

So the conference - which was pretty interesting overall - wound up to a close, much to my pleasure because now it meant I was well and truly on holidays! I scaled back down the hills at a rate twice as fast as Ryan expected because he was waiting in the hotel lobby and had only just cracked a beer. We had to check out of that hotel and check into another (for some reason SF's overpriced hotels were heavily booked for this week months in advance and so we had no choice but to shift hotels midway). So we got a cab to the Good Hotel, located in between Union Square and SOMA. The irony of the hotel's name, meanwhile, will be addressed in the next blog post.

So we dumped our gear in our new room, then got the train to the Mission district, a Mexican/Latino area, for some of the best burritos in the city apparently. We went to a small joint called El Farolito or something, and lined up with a bunch of other people who seemed to know what they were doing, and ordered a chicken burrito for me and a chicken quesadilla for Ryan. About 5 minutes later they called out our number - "noventa y cinco" - and we picked up our 7.3 kg bag of Mexican deliciousness. We ate them sitting on the ground in a nearby square and both nearly got through half of each of ours. Then we went for a wander around the area, and stopped in for a wee cocktail at a pretty trendy looking Italian bar before heading back to the hotel.

After a brief chill-out and quick change of clothes, we headed out for Ryan's belated 30th birthday celebrations courtesy of me. We walked to the Marriott at Union Square and went up to The View cocktail bar on the 39th floor. We got a table right by the window and enjoyed watching the sun set while having $7 martinis because it was happy hour! Best value drinks ever! Then it was time to head to dinner - I had booked a table at Aziza, a Michelin-starred Morrocan-style restaurant in Richmond. It's not in downtown San Fran so we hopped on a bus and headed to Aziza. Dinner was fabulous - we had the tasting menu which you'll see some pictures of once we get our asses into gear to upload them. The highlights included some squab, lamb shank, an egg yolk surrounded by smoked potato foam (so that it looked like a fried egg) and dessert (I had a hibiscus pannacotta thing) - YUM!!! Another fine dining notch on our belt which was up with there with some of the best.

So we got the bus back, the trip being a little longer than Ryan had expected because when we got off we had to set off in immediate search for a toilet. This was harder to find than you'd expect, but we eventually stumbled across one of the ever faithful Irish pubs - a bit of a dive with about 3 other old blokes who looked like they go there every night and a lovely young Irish girl behind the bar. (Oddly enough, she had to buzz in any man that wanted to use the bathroom, but not any woman). She was very friendly and helpful and tried to find out the spots in the city which might be showing the Rugby semi-final, but alas the time difference meant no where close was showing it (a good thing we didn't stay up for it though!). So we ended up heading home to "the Good Hotel" for a night of slumber...