Well, we've got to pause the blog again, the thief seems to have damaged the pc where our photos are stored, we've got backup but it will take a couple days. And by then we'll be in Hong Kong, where I've just seen a new disease outbreak has caused them to close all the schools for two weeks, then France, which is having really crappy weather. I saw a photo of an oil tanker blown onto a beach by the gales right near where we're going. So should be a great time! Back the beginning of April, so tune in then to see if we survived our latest adventure!

We walked through Noe Valley to Zuni Cafe, something of a San Francisco institution that I had wanted to go to for a while. The vibe is very laidback, partly due to the clientele, partly to the airy interior with exposed brick and beams, and partly to the spaced out staff who were incredibly slow and rarely got orders correct. Zuni is a casual restaurant that tries to go upmarket gourmet by stressing locally farmed produce. Somchai loved the oysters, among the best he'd ever had. But mostly the menu is of the burgers/pizza/sandwich variety with a twist. Food was good but not great, in particular, the shoestring fries which are supposed to be famous I found to be almost inedible. (Food-12, Decor-15, Service-8)

We then backtracked a bit to stoli's house in Noe Valley. Stoli, correct me if I'm wrong, but it would appear that while Castro is the gay business district, nearby Noe Valley is the gay residential hub. I won't tell you which house is Stoli's in case there's a stalker lurking among my fan base, but it's a cute Victorian house that he's lived in pretty much forever. He was already drinking, presumably to prepare for the ordeal of spending the day with his older brother, although perhaps he was still drinking from the previous night. Anyway, we had a couple drinks, met the roommate and pets, and then headed out for brunch.

Despite the hundreds of miles we had to walk to get to Stoli's, we still arrived early, so we explored the famed Castro on our own. Both of us had been here previously, but not together. It's quite an impressive strip of gayness, although in the morning it loses some of its impact since all good gays are still in bed. There are about thirty cities that I've been to that claim to be gay meccas, with the world's biggest this and that. I think some cities, like New York, have bigger gay areas, but they're more spread out and infiltrated by straights. So completely anecdotally I'd have to say that San Francisco wins for the biggest gay ghetto. Of course I'm excluding Bangkok, which technically should win since it's the opposite of San Francisco, a little straight ghetto around the tourist strip joints of Patpong, surrounded by a huge gay city.

After the Civic Center, the walk starts to feel more residential and less urban wasteland, and the famous Painted Ladies start to make their appearance. (And no, I'm not talking about Stoli). The Painted Ladies is the touristy term for the attractive Victorian homes that line much of the city's residential streets. They were all built in a relatively short period following the earthquake, so it gives the streets a very nice visual harmony. And the great thing about the Victorian architectural style is it's far from uniform. There are certain features that recur, but the architects have a fair amount of flexibility, particularly in the choice of color scheme. So it makes for a more fun walk than areas that are more disciplined in their uniformity, like London's Belgravia, which is quite grand but with hundreds of identical houses in identical beige color schemes, can be a bit dull after a while. The downside of San Francisco's flexibility, though, is there are too many duds in the mix, plain boxy wooden houses that negate the effort of their Painted Lady neighbors.

The houses around Alamo Square are some of the best examples, and a photo of them with the skyline as a backdrop is a quintessential tourist shot.

Saturday was family day, so of naturally it was the highlight of the trip. Since we got up ridiculously early, we decided to walk to Stoli's house, which is like deciding to walk from New York to Boston. We set out through our seedy downtown neighborhood and walked up Market Street, a huge diagonal cut through the city. It's usually the quickest way between two points because of this cutting feature, but it's also usually the ugliest.



In the midst of this nondescript urban area, the massive Civic Center caught us by surprise. (Well, not really, since it's very clearly marked on the map, and I've been here before, but I'm just making the surprise part up to emphasize that it's completely unrelated to its surroundings, and to the whole city for that matter.) The Civic Center area takes up a massive amount of space-constrained San Francisco, and is a cross between the US Capitol and les Invalides in Paris. I believe it's bigger than the Capitol, and quite grand, although the litter and large number of homeless people camped out in the surrounding parks detract from the grandeur. Also, when we went it was being set up for a huge video game contest, and there were dozens of port a potties being lined up for the festivities, which again isn't a grandeur enhancing addition.

We had a great dinner at Masa's, which unfortunately was the best we had in San Francisco. I say unfortunately because it's never a good idea to start at the top and work down. It's an intimate room, stylishly decorated and centered on a modern work of sculpture. The place was packed, and had a great buzz about it, chiefly because the maitre'd and staff did a great job animating what could be a stuffy experience due to the seriousness of the menu. We opted for the tasting menu, which included a great foie gras course, and the best squab I've ever had, which is impressive because I usually don't care for it. The Harlan Estate wine we had with it was stellar as well, and in fact we ended up buying a couple bottles later while in Napa. (Food-19, Decor-16, Service-20).

After settling in, we headed over to Union Square for some shopping. En route we passed about a dozen hotels, all of which had workers picketing out front. Apparently almost all the hotel workers in San Francisco were on strike, and we had lucked into just about the only hotel with staff. Anyway, all the big department stores are based around Union Square, so we spread our shopping dollars among them. The square itself isn't exactly beautiful, but it's a good place to hang out and watch the mobs of people walking by.

Since we've stayed at many Schrager hotels, we knew that he blows his budget on the public spaces, and that the rooms basically suck, so we opted for the biggest suite we could get our hands on. The typical Schrager hotel room is high on quirky design notes, and the size of our closet. The suite is obviously much bigger, in fact quite spacious, but one drawback is I think each room gets the same number of quirky design notes. So a big room turns out rather dull, with just a sprinkling of the Schrager magic separated by vast plains of beige. Clift Hotel: Overall- 7(Room-7, Facilities-8, Service-6)

The hotel's star attraction is the Redwood Room, a holdover from the old hotel. It's now a trendy bar and the Asia de Cuba restaurant. Actually I'm not sure if it's all that trendy since it didn't seem to have much of a crowd, but in any event it's a great looking space. We had lunch at Asia de Cuba while we were waiting for our room to be ready. The whole room is supposedly panelled with the wood from one redwood tree, and it makes quite a stately impression, especially when combined with the lofty ceiling heights. It was even more stately because we were the only customers.



As astute readers will remeber, we've eaten at this restaurant in New York and London, and as usual enjoyed the food. We shared a great plate of dumplings, for the Asia part of the name, then I followed with the Cuba part in the form of a big greasy Cubano sandwich wth some nasty yucca chips. Very filling, but the room is the real show stealer here. (Food-15, Decor-20, Service-15)

126. San Francisco

We checked out on Friday, and had an uneventful flight to San Francisco. We stayed at the Clift, yet another Ian Schrager hotel, located close to Union Square in a slightly seedy neighborhood. (Although most of San Francisco has that borderline seedy feel to it, so this neighborhood may have been par for the course.) (And don't worry Stoli, I know San Francisco is near and dear to your heart, so I'll keep snide comments to a minimum).



Unlike most Shrager hotels, this was a renovation of an older, down at heels hotel rather than a new construction, so it had a more eclectic design than most of his hotels. The lobby was typical, dark, with inappropriately throbbing dance music in early afternoon, and enormous furniture thrown about the room.

Bloated and drunk on an expensive bottle of wine hastily guzzled down, we ran to see "O", the flagship Cirque du Soleil show. It's an almost plotless, meandering show set to Enya-like nonsense music, but it's a visual tour de force with amazing choreography. Throw in some scary acrobatics, and you've got a mega-hit on your hands. Very strange and unique, and compelling entertainment. Unfortunately, we both struggled to stay awake after that poorly chosen meal, to the point where I was physically holding my eyes open.

We had an early pre-show dinner at 808 at Caesar's Palace. It's a Hawaiian fusion restaurant, apparently famous in Honolulu but not so much on the mainland. 808 is Honolulu's area code, which I think is a pretty terrible name for a famous restaurant, like I can't think of anything interesting about my restaurant except it's area code. The decor was boring and low ceilinged, and as far as I remember bore little resemblance to this photo. So they may have redecorated. Service was nice, but weirdly, everyone that worked there looked like circus freaks, to be politically incorrect. I don't think this was intentional, but each and every server had a very prominent (insert politically correct word for defect here, because it's escaping me at the moment). Weirdly, we had just finished a long lunch a few hours ago, and we were in a rush to see a show, so, we decided on a multicourse tasting menu, an exceedingly bad idea. Since we had little time, the obliging staff sped through the menu, piling dish after dish of food, for which we had absolutely no appetite. Their signature deconstructed Ahi roll is excellent, their big mass of lukewarm raw tuna, not so much. (Food-15, Decor-9, Service-12).

After lunch we went next door to the Alladin hotel, which chose a perhaps unfortunate Arab theme for its hotel. The casino is one of the nicer looking ones in town, and the attached mall, Desert Passages, is a huge recreation of a Middle Eastern souk. Like most places in Las Vegas, they also have a trick ceiling, and this one has thunderstorms. I kept reading that it actually rains on people, which I thought was a good idea to get people out of the hallways and into the shops. But I only heard thunder and saw the fake storm clouds, so I'm not sure if it's true.

We celebrated with a very expensive bottle of champagne at the hotel's Mon Ami Gabi restaurant. It's a perfect recreation of a Paris bistro, with an added bonus of sidewalk dining, a rarity in Las Vegas. Of course you're overlooking a busy highway instead of the Champs Elysees, but other than that the illusion is perfect. Our waitress was the oldest person in Las Vegas, and a very colorful character. Food was traditional bistro fare, steak frites, oysters etc. Definitely recommended. (Food-15, Decor-17, Service-15),

Thursday Somchai broke the bank at the Paris hotel, so I wouldn't be surprised if the hotel closed after our visit (actually I would since Stoli had already commented that he recently stayed there). He won about $4,000 in Wheel of Fortune jackpots in less than an hour. The hotel itself is very nice as well, along the lines of New York New York and Venetian. All the usual Parisian landmarks are there, and they've got guys who ride around on bikes wearing berets and carrying baguettes just to add to the faux ambiance.

We gambled a bit more at the Venetian, with Somchai winning another $1,000, this time at the Monte Carlo slot machine, but I lost enough to balance things out. We also had a very good dinner at Mesa Grill, Bobby Flay's new (at the time) Las Vegas outpost. I had been to his New York restaurant and liked it but wasn't wowed, and this place had just opened yesterday, so it could easily have been a disaster, but it was actually one of our best Las Vegas meals. Service was a strong point here, and the restaurant itself was very nicely designed, cleverly divided to mask the fact that it's a pretty cavernous place, and with plenty of interesting design touches to keep everyone entertained. Food was typical Bobby Flay, a nouvelle Tex-Mex. (Food-16, Decor-18, Service-18).

We stopped for a quick lunch at Tsunami Grill along the canal. Nothing much to write here, just a cheapish sushi and noodle joint. (Food-12, Decor-10, Service-7). The name reminds me of a Japanese restaurant in Bangkok, Tsunami, that opened up about a week before the real tsunami devastated southern Thailand (among other places.) Since they had invested so much in publicity, signage etc they were reluctant to change the name, but it would be in pretty poor taste to keep the name. So the restaurant split in two, with Tsu being a sushi bar, and Nami being like a Benihana kind of place.

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We walked around the Grand Canal shopping center for a while, and weren't the least bit tempted to stand in line for a ride on a gondola through the mall, waving at all the shopper/eaters. Overcome by the beauty of it all, though, Somchai couldn't resist asking a newlywed couple if he could take their photo. Not sure if there expression shows they're creeped out by the request, or just tired of taking pictures, but it made Somchai happy. As for my photo, not sure what I'm doing, either posing artistically, which is very unlike me, or distracted.

One huge drawback in Las Vegas is the lack of taxis. There are plenty of them, I guess, but so many gamblers and conventioneers to cater to that the line for taxis is invariably long. So we usually walked from place to place, which in the case of our walk from Luxor to the Venetian meant a very long walk. The Venetian seems to be the most over the top hotel. They did an outstanding job of recreating the Piazza San Marco and the Grand Canal (except of course they put the Canal indoors and lined it with shops).

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Luxor is a pretty cool casino. A sleek black pyramid with a Sphinx in front, and a well-detailed faux Egyptian soaring atrium inside. The best thing about the hotel is that it basically gives away money. Somchai won the $1,000 jackpot here on the Wheel of Fortune game, then won it again ten minutes later. He wanted to keep going but we were gettting bored with winning all the time, so he gave his slot machine/ATM to somebody else.

It's now Wednesday, and Somchai's gambling fortunes started to turn in a big way. We visited the very tacky Excalibur first. It's a huge mock castle that makes no attempt to look authentic, or even attractive, and the interior is very "ye olde". It seems to be very geared to kids, so we didn't stick around long. I did, however, have my first Krispy Kreme donut. There's a neverending stream of publicity about these donuts, even overseas where they're not available, and I had to try donuts for which people were willing to stand in line for hours. So I was pretty disappointed to see the boring varieties on offer, and the taste? Like a donut. Overrated.

We had a late night dinner at Mandalay Bay's China Grill, the Las Vegas outpost of a New York restaurant I never really got excited about. This version is all dark lighting and sexy vibe, and attracts a pretty cool crowd. But it inexplicably serves massive portions, which makes it seem like the Good and Plenty restaurant in Pennsylvania Dutch country. The food is actually pretty good, with an ambitious fusion menu, but the revoltingly large servings are really hard to take. Whatever you do, don't order the Shanghai lobster, which comes on a foot long tray and piled over a foot high with food. (Unless of course you want to eat a cubic foot of food). Food-13, Decor-16, Service-15)

We (and our quarters) then went to see Zumanity, the softporn version of Cirque du Soleil. It was mildly entertaining, with the drag queen MC being the biggest hit, and some of the acts were impressive, but it's pretty far from the mainstream Cirque du Soleil, much more of a burlesque act which didn't use the acrobatic skills for which Cirque is famous. Our seats were cool, though, bright red ovestuffed couches down at the front. Somchai took that weirdly angled photo from our seats below the stage, and then one of the staff yelled at him and told him no photos were allowed.

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