San Francisco Trip - Part 2

This one shouldn't be as long as yesterday's post, but I will load it up with more photos then the last one....

Saturday morning we were up early and met up with Alex and Dr. Lim for breakfast, and then off to Napa Valley for a day of wine tasting. The day before I had dropped the three of them off from the rental car at the hotel and headed out to gas up the car, but what they didn't know is that I had returned the rental and Tina had rented a limo to drive us around for the day. When they came back down after breakfast and we were standing outside by the limo their look of confusion and surprise was better then we could have hoped for.
We left earlier then originally planned so that we could first swing by the Golden Gate bridge and get some photos, since they weren't sure when they would get a chance in the final two days of their trip.
Once done with that we headed up to the wonderful wineries of Napa Valley, stopping first at Robert Craig to start the day with a tasting.
From there a quick stop at a supermarket so that we could pick up food for a picnic which we enjoyed with a bottle from the Clos Du Val winery.
After lunch we went over to Rubicon Estate, the Niebaum-Coppola winery for a tasting and a tour of the Chateau, some of the property, the wine caves, and the history of how Coppola found himself in the wine business.
That's a long day of enjoying a limo, good picnic food, and some outstanding wines...
So we headed back via the Bay Bridge with a stop to get some nice photos of San Francisco, finally returning to the hotel after a quick stop at the top of Lombard Street.
A few minutes to get freshened up in the hotel and we were off to dinner at Spruce. Spruce had come recommended, and with quite a wait list for reservations, and it did not disappoint. Easily one of the best meals that Tina and I have had in years, and we had the impression that our guests enjoyed it too...

And then that was it, our quick two day trip was over. We got up early the next morning so that we could catch a flight back to Chicago, and Alex and Dr. Lim had a final day, which they finally managed to get some shopping done, before heading back to Malaysia.

They came down in the morning to see us off, and presented us with a travel lunchbox of morning snacks and coffee that we had the fun of figuring out how to finish during a 10 minute ride to the airport.

It was a perfect weekend, and really great to see them again, and as a final bonus they did promise that one of their next international trips they would make it all they way over to Chicago to visit us...

Before our next trip, we tell you about our last one..

Ok, so we are leaving for holiday this Friday to spend a week off enjoying the fun of this world, and I'm thinking that following that we will go back into some sort of regular posting. Only time will tell...

So with that bit out of the way - on with a long post of what we did just about three weeks ago. As most of you who have been following our blog may already know - while we were in China we became close friends with a family out of Malaysia. We met two sisters of the family in Xiamen and then the rest of the family down in Ipoh on the first of what would turn out to be several trips down to Malaysia to visit them.

We stopped back down to Ipoh over Thanksgiving last year during our short 10 day 5 country trip. While we were there we learned that Alex and his friend Dr. Lim would be traveling over to the United States this year for their vacation, and we knew that we owed them a first hand view of the States for all of the accommodation and touring that they had previously planned on our many trips to Ipoh. Sadly, when we discussed their trip with them they would not have time to make it out to Chicago so that we could give them our version of a local red carpet tour...

Well that seemed sad to us, and there was no way that we weren't going to meet up with them. Therefore on the last Thursday in April we took a late night flight on Thursday out to San Francisco so we could meet them on the tail end of their holiday, and hopefully show them a little of California that they would not have planned to see if they were on tour by themselves.

First thing Friday morning I left the hotel and rented a car, and as soon as they finished breakfast we met up with our friends and started their tour. The weather turned out perfectly, without a cloud in the sky and a temperature a comfortable 20^oC. As we got caught up on the LA, Las Vegas, and Grand Canyon section of their trip we drove over to the ocean for a nice coastal drive down the 1 highway. We along enjoying the scenery and making a stop along the way to enjoy the cliffs and one of California's old lighthouse's before finally pulling into the quaint storybook town of Carmel-by-the-sea. We enjoyed a great lunch at a small little restaurant in the center of town and then wandered about for a while taking in the beach and perusing the many knick-knack stores that make up the town.

From there we drove a few more miles south of town before turning around and heading back to San Francisco so we could head out to dinner. They had flown in to San Francisco a few days before us and had already toured the main touristy sites, which allowed us to pick some restaurants that they normally wouldn't have gone to. Friday night we had booked a reservation at a nice seafood restaurant, only to have them inform us in the car that they had been having seafood the last several nights and that they were kind of finished with it….

Oh well, that's too bad for them since a few hours aren't enough time to change reservations to another restaurant in the city, and off we went to Farallon for dinner. Turns out that they were just eating average seafood and that's what they were tired of eating, since everyone devoured the scallops, oysters, lobster, and everything else we ordered. Tina did most of the ordering of the food, and in a return to the Chinese style of dining, we had them bring us out small plates so that we could each share a portion of the meals that we ordered. It worked out perfectly, other then the point where Dr. Lim excused himself to the bathroom and decided to take it upon himself to pay the bill…

Seeing as we found that unacceptable we ignored their pleas to head back to the hotel after the long day and instead we went over to a small jazz bistro to enjoy a few drinks and some enjoyable conservation before calling it a night and finally heading back to the hotel and to bed.

The second day of our quick weekend tomorrow, or when I get around to writing about it.

The plan is to have it finished before we leave on Friday, but I do also know that I've a lot that needs to be packed up tomorrow night, so I will not be making any promises...

Key West Weekend

Two weeks ago we had a three day weekend, so being in the cold Chicago weather we decided to make the most of it with a weekend trip to Key West, Florida.

It's been a while since we've posted anything, and I'm not fully in the mood for typing a lot so we are just going to dump a ton of photos on here and maybe make a few comments - enjoy...

Friday night we flew in and met our Friends Heather and Mike in Miami Beach for some drinking and relaxing with live music, no photos of that night, but then bright and early Saturday morning we were up and in a rented convertible for the drive down to Key West.

A quick stop in Key Largo for lunch.
End of US1 - Key West, Florida
First night in Key West - enjoying some nice wine

The first night was nice and relaxing, just the way a holiday should be, and the next morning we were up at out to wander at a nice leisurely pace...

The sign for the house at the southernmost tip of the continental United States.

Ah, the lower corner of the States...

... and the line of people waiting to pose next to it. We didn't.

Amazingly, no line for a photo of the southernmost fireplug.

For our final night in Key West, we signed up for the local booze cruise, a nice trip out to watch the sunset while drinking margaritas and enjoying a decent band. It was worth it...

After the cruise we wandered to an outstanding tapas restaurant for dinner and then to a chocolate restaurant called 'Better than Sex' for desert, where even the wine glasses are dipped in chocolate for you to enjoy. I'm not sure that it really lived up to it's name, but it was pretty good...

Overall it was an excellent weekend trip, however our Monday morning drive back started like this -

That was a call back to the airlines after they canceled our afternoon flight out of Miami to Chicago. I spent at least an hour of our drive back on the phone trying to have the four of us rerouted so that we could get back. Apparently the snow in Chicago and the rain in Florida were conspiring to try and keep us there, or at least force us to fly back on a flight connecting elsewhere and therefore adding hours to our return time... We finally were able to book ourselves onto a flight out of nearby Ft. Lauderdale.

Aftermath of the rains we saw on the drive back.

The storms during our drive were pretty bad, punctuated with spots of sunshine, but at least we managed to book a return flight. We arrived at the airport only about 4 hours early, no reason to go out since there were torrential rains at this point, and our flight was only delayed a little over 2 hours. We hunkered down in the airport bar and kept ourselves busy playing cards, by the time we finally arrived back into the cold of Chicago it was just after 01:00...

Manatee mailbox holders, a south Florida special that we couldn't convince our friends to purchase.

Talking about the past... part 3

The final leg of our 4 country, 12 day vacation as a one night stop in Tokyo to see friends Holly and Skip, with their kids Skylar and Blayden. We took an overnight flight from Malaysia and arrived at their place early on Saturday morning.

A quick shower to freshen up and we were off with Holly and the kids to wander the streets of Tokyo and see the little German Christmas market that was set up in one of the neighborhoods. That night we planned to show the two local expats what we knew of Tokyo, taking them first to the local sushi restaurant that Matt had found when were were here a few years ago for the Red Sox games, and then where we stopped in when passing through on our way to Hawaii. So off we went with our business card for the restaurant, and after some slight confusion we found the place, and of course it's closed. Holly talked to some locals and they told us that they are always closed on the weekends....

But that was okay, after accepting the let down and apologizing we found a tiny little restaurant around the corner where Skip had to work hard on his reading and speaking skills in order to get us food, but the food that we did eat was delicious.

After dinner we headed across town to take them to the jazz bar we went to last time we were here so that we could see Stan Gilbert again. So what happened here? Well as you can probably guess Stan doesn't play on the weekends so we missed him too. Overall our night of trying to upstage the locals with out knowledge was a bust, but we did leave them with two cards for these places so that hopefully Skip and Holly will get a chance to return and enjoy the night that we had tried to show them...

The next day we had to leave in the early afternoon for our flight home so we tagged along with our friends to the local Synagogue where they were having a Sunday buffet since we were there in the middle of Hanukkah, so we were able to enjoy a nice meal and once again learn how to play the dradle game.



From there we were off to the airport and then back on the plane heading for the states, it was a quick trip and we packed a lot into it but it was definitely worth it all just to be able to spend such quality time will all of our friends and family over on that side of the world...

Talking about the past... part 2

From Xiamen we went down to Singapore for two quick nights, where we were supposed to meet up with The Mexican but just a few weeks prior he was transferred back to the States. We have been to Singapore before and seen most of the sights, so we used this unexpected break as a great bit of down time between to sections of our trip, oh and we went to the Singapore zoo.

The latter part of the day rained so we relaxed in our hotel room enjoying a bottle of wine and playing Scrabble. The next morning we were up bright and early to the train station for a 10 hour ride up to Ipoh, Malaysia to see our family.

Station in Singapore - closing early next year

Station in Ipoh

In Ipoh we only had a quick two nights, but we needed to get there to see family again, and as usual they pull out all the stops to make sure that we have an excellent time. One thing that we learnt after arriving is that Ipoh has an airport that has direct flights to/from Singapore and that only take about an hour... But the train ride was nice, and we got to see the countryside and a great downpour as we rolled through Kuala Lumpur.

Alex with the champagne we brought for them

FamilyMore FamilyA very pregnant Siew Yih

The second night we were there they went out and treated us to an amazing feast, probably some of the best food that we've ever eaten. It was great to see everyone and have the time to catch up with them even though it was such a short time, the next day we were back at the train station to head down to Kuala Lumpur to catch an overnight flight to Tokyo.

The good news from the trip is that Alex and Dr. Lim are coming over to the States this spring and hopefully we will get a chance to catch up with them then...