Max S. Dunn

Blog: SF Localcation 2009

Posted by: Max Dunn on July 4, 2009 08:46:41

A "Staycation" is where you take a vacation by staying at home. But we coined a new term when we went to San Francisco for a vacation: "Localcation" for "local vacation" .

We talked about going someplace far, like the East Coast or Europe for a vacation, but realized there are so many wonderful things to do close by in California, that it seemed silly to waste a lot of energy flying to a remote spot before we have exhausted all the things we can do locally. We haven't even gotten close to seeing everything in SF so we decided to go there for a few days.

Since having a car in SF is a little silly, we took the train up there and took the bus around everywhere

 

On Sunday night, we went to the Castro district and had a fabulous dinner at Zadin, which was a Vietnamese restaurant that offered a gluten free menu. The pho was the best we had ever had, and the shaken beef was fantastic. We also had a really good bottle of Riesling that complimented the dishes perfectly. Highly recommended!

 

On Monday, Suzanne had to go to work and took Claire so Maxie and I had the day to ourselves. We kept on a tight schedule and visited the SF Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and really enjoyed the Georgia O'Keefe/Ansel Adams show. It was really cool seeing a picture Adams took of a mission and then seeing a painting by O'Keefe of the same mission. We also liked the new sculpture garden.

 

We then had lunch at the Yerba Buena center and afterwards took the cable cars to Fisherman's Wharf.

 

We rented bikes and rode across the Golden Gate bridge and took the ferry back from Sausalito. One of the highlights of the trip!

    

Dinner that night was at Asia de Cuba. In New York, we had a fabulous dinner there but this time in SF, it was extremely disappointing - Zadin was much better.

On Tuesday, we did some shopping and visited Alcatraz. The kids have never been there before, and while I have gone several times, I have never taken the audio tour before and it really added to the experience.

        

On Wednesday, we did some more shopping and visited Chinatown. But the highlight was the behind-the-scenes tour of Giant stadium. We got to go in the press box, luxury suites, locker room and dugout!

   

This was a wonderful localcation!