arrival

Landed yesterday at about 10am. While the Perth to Sydney flight was fine, I was not well on the Sydney to SF leg. Blergh. The nice Qantas steward refused to give me my special vego breakfast (because it contained eggs, which I wouldn't eat anyway, but which he did not think would stay down). He would only let me have cornflakes. But aside from that breakfast, Qantas vegan meals (they don't do lacto-ovo-vego) are good! Definitely more palatable than Mark's omni meals, and generally healthier too. By the time we cleared customs (fingerprinting of both hands, thumbprinting, photographing...) and worked out the BART (train system) and got to our hotel it was about midday.

So we spent the afternoon sorting out a simcard for Mark and checking out the nearest pet supply store. Heh. Oh, and the art galleries! There's loads of extremely good art galleries round our hotel. One is showing original Latrec lithographs. Another has a Chagall exhibition. Another had an artist list outside that made me gurgle - Miro, Chagall, Haring... but there's also quite a lot of galleries for emerging artists, which is quite interesting. Had a chat to the nice owner of Mark went out for a drink with some people at the conference, and we were both so tired when we got back that we just headed to the Mexican restaurant next to our hotel for dinner. It was awesome - sort of nouvelle Mexican. Plus, this being SF there was an actual range of vego choices on the menu. So Mark got a lamb shank baked in banana leaves, while I got this awesome pile of cheesy caulflowery goop sitting on an ancho chilli tomato sauce with mushrooms on top. Sooooo good.

For lunch we went to a diner that is in Lonely Planet. At 2pm the tiny little Dotti's True Blue Diner still had a queue down the street to get in for lunch. A half hour wait got us two seats at the counter in front of the short order cook. Then we learned the thing about the massive portion sizes in America. I ordered two pancakes (wholemeal buttermilk with cinnamon and ginger and real maple syrup) and a side of potato hash. Mark ordered two pieces of French toast and a side of bacon.... I managed one pancake... we got through about 2/3 of the hash... Mark ate about three quarters of his French toast... we're going to try to remember to share meals from now on!

There's so much music in SF - loud street buskers and music coming out of shops. Usually jazz or South American stuff. I like it a lot.