Last week I did a 36-hour trip to San Francisco, one of my very favourite cities. It was for work, alas, and I didn’t get to see or do all — or anything, really — that I would have liked, but it was still quite nice. Here’s how it went:
- 5+ hour flight to SFO, during which I watched Se7en (for the quillionth time) and several episodes of Portlandia (for the first time)
- 6+ hour vendor meeting, which actually went better than you would normally expect with a 6+ hour vendor meeting
- Dinner at L’Appart, a fantastic French restaurant up in San Anselmo. I had Shrimp Napoleon and cassoulet and crème brûlée, and shared in the flowing bottles of Bordeaux and Cotes du Rhone. It was like being back in Juilley.
- Heavy, zonked, lights-out sleep at the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins in Nob Hill
- Relaxing morning, including a walk around the city (and by ‘a walk’ I mean ‘climbing up and down a million hills’), a Starbucks stop and returning to my room to sit in the window, drink my coffee and read the New York Times
- 5+ hour flight to YYZ, during which I watched Patton (imdb | rotten tomatoes) for the first time. I’ve always put off watching it because it’s so long, but when you have five hours to kill a 182-minute movie comes in handy.
I would have loved to spend more time in the city, or take a side trip up to Napa, but it just wasn’t happening. Still, 24 hours in northern California in February is better than no hours at all.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 
Yes, I know your pain. I fly to Miami tomorrow for work and back on Friday. Although I do hope to get out at least one night.
That’s the weird thing…it wasn’t painful. A good meeting, a great meal, a few hours to enjoy some California weather and decent in-flight entertainment made it surprisingly enjoyable.
Enjoy Miami.
[…] Really, though, this year’s recurring theme was about being ambulatory. Nellie and I took off on five weekend trips around Ontario (Prince Edward County; our friends’ cottage on Bat Lake; an aborted camping stay in Bon Echo; two visits to Niagara’s wine country), four trips out of the country (New Orleans with friends to see the Final Four; Sedona and the Grand Canyon just before I spoke at a conference in Phoenix; New York; Amsterdam & Brussels), and Nova Scotia for Christmas. There was no monster trip in there like Australia last year, and only the Amsterdam half of our European trip was remarkable, but the atmosphere of New Orleans, the beauty of Arizona, and the blast of NYC more than met our travel experience quota. In addition to Phoenix I logged a handful of quick trips for work (San Francisco; Chicago; Washington DC; New York; London) but tight schedules kept me from exploring much beyond a few watering holes and restaurants. […]