We ate at Nick's Lighthouse last night. As it turns out that is the same place that Gina and her friend Brenda ate at when she was in San Fran last time.
I started out the crab adventure looking to eat a crab all by myself, but the idea of clam chowder inside of a bread-bowl was too much for me. I ended up ordering the sourdough bread-bowl of clam chowder, Gina ordered a full crab and we split an order of fried calamari (which was EXCELLENT).
My chowder was good, the bread-bowl was really good. I also had an Anchor-Steam, a local brew that is quite popular and tasty. Gina had a Corona with her crab. I stole a couple of the smaller pieces of her crab for myself.
I am not a crab hater, but it isn't the first thing that I crave when we hit a seafood place like the Fisherman's Wharf area. But for me the trip to the Fisherman's Wharf area was more about the experience of eating down in that area (being a bit touristy) vs eating fried fish or shrimp.
Gina loved the crab and as always with crab had a great time cracking it open (with little use of the utilities they provide).
During our trip down there, Gina thought we were going to miss the wharf and had us get off the street car early. As it turned out I think we were still about 2 miles from the wharf at that point. We enjoyed the walk, but the last block or so we definitely felt it was time to sit down and eat.
We were accosted by a street salesman along the way, trying to pitch us on a weekend in Napa Valley at some swanky new $100M hotel that has the USA's first, only and largest 'wine cave'. His pitch was nice and informational at first, but then he cranked it up into the high pressure area, Gina hates sales people, particularly the high pressure kind. I sort of have an affinity for sales people, I love to see how well they do in their pitch.
I love talking with a good sales person, someone who knows their product and is a true practitioner of the craft. I HATE and have no issue being a bit rude to BAD sales people. Often BAD sales people reek of desperation or just flat out don't care about what they are doing.
Gina gave me the perfect out as she just sort of said 'OK, I am done.' and walked away. I told the guy that I had to leave as I had 'lost my wife'. He continued his hard sales push and ceased to be a good sales guy. In part, yes a sales person does need to have a level of persistence that one can call 'annoying' but a GOOD sales person knows when they have lost the (immediate) opportunity and knows when to stop, as not to damage what (little) relationship with the prospect might exist.
Anyway, the food was GREAT.
We grabbed some taffy from a store there across from restaurants.
Along the way over to the Trolley cars I saw a
'Trader Joe's'.
I have read about the store and wanted to witness what it was all about. It sort of reminds me a of a miniature Central Market.
Another one of the things I had read about was 'Two Buck Chuck', which is apparently a good wine that is only $2/bottle. However, I wasn't sure the name of the wine was actually 'Two Buck Chuck' or something else.
We wandered around the store until we found a wine that was $1.99, the name is Charles Shaw, and the nickname for Charles is Chuck.
We bought a bottle of Shiraz and Cabernet, I will let you know how those turn out.
Well, my laundry is done, so I am thinking that we should pack it in and head back to the hotel, drop off the laptops and head out for the next adventure.
I think we are going to hit up the
Timbuk2 retail store and see if we can find the ASPCA while we are here.
Laterz
