San Francisco

And we’re on the move again… we packed our things and headed out of Yosemite this morning as we make our way back to Northern California for Corey (Bryan’s younger brother) and Amber’s wedding. Since Bryan and I have never been to San Francisco together (I’ve been for conferences and Bryan came through on a visit to his brother when our nephew, Cove, was born) – we thought it would be nice to visit the city together.

So what do you do with only 6 hours in San Francisco?

First stop, after dropping our bags off at Hotel California, was the Wholefoods Market for dessert before dinner. They have a GREAT selection of Carmela-friendly desserts so we prioritized going there first. Then it was onto the World Famous San Francisco Cable Cars. While you can catch these at various stops along their route, we decided to start at the turn station at Powell Street - it was cool to see them be manually turned just like the old days.

We then rode UP and DOWN the steep San Fran streets on the cable car – Bryan even got to ride standing up, hanging on the rails. I couldn’t help but sing “Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat! Ding! Ding!” jingle while we rode (yes I realize I’m dating myself and Bryan’s students will likely not know this jingle, but with the miracle of the internet I’m sure you can find it out there, somewhere). Our driver was fantastic! He had a great personality and really made the experience that much more memorable for us.

The cable car brought us from Market Street down to Fisherman’s Wharf on the water. The wharf is famous for many things, besides shopping (boring!), there’s the Pier 39 Sea Lions, Alcatraz, numerous street performers, a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and lots of places to eat, including The Crab House at Pier 39. Since California is known for Dungeness Crab, we opted to have local fare for dinner. It was delicious (yes, that's Bryan wearing a bib) and our seats were perfect – we were overlooking the bay and got to watch the Sea Lions and enjoy the spectacular sun setting behind Golden Gate Bridge. All in all, it was a lovely way to end our vacation for two since on Wednesday we’ll be meeting up with lots of family, from all over the country, for pre-wedding fun.

Portland Eats

I do love to eat! The fact that we have so many dietary restrictions does make it a bit of a challenge when we travel, but we struck gold here in Portland. I haven't said much about the city itself - in large part because I'm mostly stationed in the hotel room working on curriculum while Carmela's in her conference - but tonight's meals inspired me to reflect a bit more. One of my duties when we travel is to scout out Carmela-friendly places to eat, and in the past couple of days we have found, tried, and loved - Great Harvest which is a bakery that actually stone-grinds their own flour and has vegan options; The Flying Elephant which is a cool deli that, like Great Harvest, uses local and sustainable foods; Bangkok Palace with some great Thai food; and Old Towne Pizza which is supposed to be haunted.

Tonight we grabbed take-out at the Vegetarian House (all vegan Chinese food) and ate down by the Willamette River, but beforehand we stopped at Voodoo Doughnuts . I would compare Voodoo Doughnuts to Mike's Pastries in Boston - the food is great, and it's worth waiting in the half hour line outside (that's when we took the "Keep Portland Wierd" picture, too) because of the place itself. I've seen this place on the Travel Channel and the Food Network several times and just had to go - it turned out that they have an impressive selection of vegan donuts, so Carmela was able to do more than join in the wait. Sometimes the vegan donuts are made with bananas as the binder, but we lucked out because today they used apple. "Do you know how long it has been since I've had a creme-filled donut?!" Carmela exclaimed as she enjoyed her first bites.

The picture is taken back at our hotel room (this took a lot of will-power to not eat them on the walk back). Starting from the left, going clockwise, is the Portland Creme, a Chocolate Coconut (which Carmela found misleading because she expected the donut itself to be chocolate rather than a chocolate glaze), the Old Dirty Bastard (a raised donut with oreo and peanut butter), and a Triple Chocolate Penetration (yes those are Coco Puffs, which is why I'll have it in the morning for breakfast). You can see me starting to eat my Old Dirty Bastard, but it's still sitting half finished next to me - so I gotta go.