So, we headed out to Cali yesterday morning. Our flight to Newark was uneventful, as was our flight to SFO, although we sat next to a painter and her cat–her husband and her other cat (in a bizarre coincidence, a male named Tucker) were across the aisle.
Her website “has some interesting material”:http://madelonjones.com/. She was very interesting to talk to.
We also saw ??The Bourne Supremacy?? and ??Vanity Fair??. ??The Bourne Supremacy?? seemed a perfectly reasonable film of its type–a reasonable way to pass an hour and a half. ??Vanity Fair?? actually left me interesting in reading the book for I wonder how the book itself treats Becky Sharp.
The movie seems to portray her as someone who starts off as a good, if driven, woman who gradually loses her way in the fairly amoral environment she ascends to–her desire to climb socially doesn’t seem as calculating as it might have been, and she shows a lot of compassion to a lot of people during the process, perhaps more than she might be expected to.
Anyway, we landed, got to Hotel Nikko, discovered that we didn’t have reservations–apparently a fuckup on the part of the conference organizers–but we were able to talk our way in anyway. We took a swim, then went for a fairly early dinner at the Tadich Grill.
While it’s probably not a tourist trap _per se_, it’s probably got a lot of tourists going to it. We might not have gone except for Anne’s mother who seemed to want to experience it vicariously.
The food was good, although it’s a very no-nonsense environment. I had a petrala sole, charcoal grilled, that was quite nice with nothing more than lemon. As a side dish, the spinach with garlic is highly recommended. And we got to see set of twins who are “apparently some sort of local institution”:http://www.pbase.com/image/274414.
Then we went back to the hotel and slept. Now I’m sitting in a cafe in Sonoma, it’s just hit 10am, and I’m about to go hit a bunch of wineries.
