Title: December 5, 2023 - San Francisco
I got up a bit later than I normally do. In this case it was 7:30. I did a few things, but going on a walk was not one of them. We sort of lolly-gagged around and did not get started real early on our trip.
By the time we were ready to leave, left instructions with Steven and said our goodbyes, it was closing in on 11:00am. Sherri started off driving-always a good thing. But I suspect she did not want to face the City traffic later. Anyway, she drove to Gilroy where we topped off with Costco gas.Then wandered around Gilroy trying to find the Smart&Final-to pick up some bags of chips.
Once that had been accomplished, we stopped at Black Bear Diner for lunch or an early dinner. It had been at least four years, if not five since we last ate at a Black Bear. I ordered my normal, a Western Burger. When it came, it seemed smaller, almost like a large slider size. I suspect our waiter had not been around that long and did not know how big they were previously. It tasted OK, but not running over with BBQ sauce like I remembered. Then again, it may be that my memory is faulty.
I drove from Gilroy to the City. Google took us up Highway 101. There were a few places where there were slow downs, but it was not as bad as I feared it would be. We got into San Francisco around 4:30. Still it was not too bad. I misread the car’s GPS and turned off on the wrong off-ramp-would Google have let me do that? Still, it was not bad. We meandered through the heart of San Francisco, eventually getting on Lombard. In a mile or so, we made it to our home for the next three days: Cow Hollow Inn.
We are on the third floor, room 305. Everything is clean and comfortable. Maybe a bit closer to Lombard than we expected, still not bad noise-wise. We will see if we hold this opinion at the end of our trip.
We rested until about 6:15. Then went for a walk west on Chestnut to Divisidero. We made a loop over back to Lombard which brought us back to Chestnut. Walking back down this, we came across a bookstore, Books, Inc. We hit the jackpot there! One of the missions of this trip was to find something to give to our book group. Eureka! Then we continued on down Chestnut eyeballing shops to go to: Noah’s Bagel’s for breakfast, Over the Moon for ice cream, Super Duper Burgers or Marina Pizza for dinner all sound good. There are many foodie shops around. We will see what we come up with. Our trip: 2 miles.
It is 7:30 by the time we get back to our room. I write some cards; Sherri does some exercises. Then we have some of Black Bear Diner’s Red Velvet Cake. We lounged around, before going to bed at 10.
Background
Black Bear Diner-Gilroy. We had not been to a Black Bear Diner since before the pandemic. We have always enjoyed the good food, good service, good-sized meals, and good prices. When we were on our way to San Francisco, we stopped here for a late lunch. The service was good. Maybe the memory is fading about what we ate before. But the food, while acceptable, did not seem as flavorful as before and the size of the Western burger was more slider sized-the onion rings took up more room than the burger. And I could have sworn that the Western Burger had bacon on it before rather than as an extra. This was one of the more expensive meals which we had on our trip-and we did not visit a McDonalds. So all in all, we were disappointed.
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