Selfishly, the major reason for the trip, was purpose one for me, to see the ATOC.
We took off on a beautiful day from San Diego.
We arrived at the San Francisco Airport (SFO) in the early afternoon. It's always an interesting approach into that airport if the landing pattern is from the south. It looks like you're going to land in the water, but the runway/land pops up at the last minute (on the right in the pic below).
After getting our luggage we hopped on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) into downtown San Francisco. We exited the Powell St. station and once out of the underground, we were hit by the loud and vibrant city of San Francisco. We stopped on our walk to the hotel to snap some pics.
Once we got settled at the Marine Memorial Club Hotel just off Union Square, we started getting hungry, having only eaten breakfast. We tried unsuccessfully the 2 weeks before our trip to get reservations at "Kokkari," a Greek restaurant we heard really good things about. We had reservations at another place for 9pm. It was about 4pm and we were starving. We called Kokkari and Cezanne talked with the hostess. They had no cancellations, but she said we could come sit at the bar which also featured a full menu and was first come first serve. They opened at 5pm, so we thought we'd be like some "older folk" and go for an early dinner given we were starving. We also thought going early would obviously up our chances for getting a spot at the bar. After getting changed, we set out on foot for the restaurant, about 15 blocks from our hotel.
We arrived at Kokkari at exactly 5:03pm.
Good timing! We felt a little awkward being there so soon after they opened, but that feeling faded once we went in. We got the last 2 seats at the bar! What!?!? It was 3 minutes past opening time and the bar was full! And it was full mainly with 30-40 year olds. A couple came in a few minutes behind us and they would up waiting an hour and a half to sit at the bar. We were actually the first ones to leave the bar. Somebody tried to snag our seats, but the couple who had been waiting and the bartender were all over it, and fairly gave the seats to the couple who had patiently been waiting.
We couldn't have been more pleased with the food. It was all excellent, including the Greek "Tselepos" wine. We wanted to try something different that our usual American Pinot Noir or Merlot and were very pleasantly surprised. We started of with dolmathes, grape leaves stuffed with rice, pine nuts, and currants. They were the best I've ever had. I could describe every last dish, but I'll just say it was all some of the best food we've ever had and it was very reasonably priced. With 4 mezes plates (kind of tapas sized), one main plate, and 2 glasses of wine, the total bill was $86. Not too shabby.
We wanted to work off dinner and an appetite for dessert, so we decided to walk from Kokkari along the Embarcadero to the fisherman's wharf area...and ultimately to the Ghiradelli Factory for an ice cream sunday. It was a long walk, including views of the Coit Tower, the Bay Bridge (not the Golden Gate), the very touristy fisherman's wharf, the street performers, many signs for sourdough bread and clam chowder.
We finally made it to "Ghiradelli Square." I guess I've always called it the Ghiradelli Factory, but that's not what the sign says. So, we concluded our first night in San Francisco with a Brownie and Dark Chocolate Ice Cream Sunday.
No comments:
Post a Comment