Shortly after returning to Cambridge after Labor Day we left again for San Francisco for interviews and recon. We arrived on Thursday evening, found the hotel, and went to bed. Benoit had an interview the next day with Yelp so I walked around the piers all day. That night we attended happy hour at Yelp and had epic burgers with some of the team at Bluestem Brasserie.
View from the waterfront
On Saturday we took the tramway to Castro and walked around this neighborhood, then the Mission and Mission Dolores. Castro and Mission Dolores are both area's we'd love to live, but Castro is a bit far from downtown and they're both more expensive. We had lunch at Zuni Cafe, then took the tramway north and walked around the waterfront. Exhausted, we took a bus tour in the afternoon to see as much of the city as possible. We ate dinner at a small Italian restaurant we stumbled upon in Little Italy then stumbled back to the hostel and went to sleep.
Sunday we took the bus out to the Pacific Ocean, walked around Richmond and down the beach to Sunset. We found BBQ pork and ate lunch in Golden Gate Park. I was very unimpressed while Benoit was ambivalent about these 2 neighborhoods. We took the Light Rail West and walked through Inner Sunset, Haight Ashbury, and Hayes Valley. We had lunch at Hayes and Kebab, which was delicious (thanks Travis!). After lunch, we picked up the rental car, gathered our belongings, and drove south to the new hotel in San Bruno.
We met Joe for dinner in San Mateo at B Street and Vine where we had really great brushetta's, salad, wine, and conversation. Dessert was found at Yogurtouille, then we headed back to San Bruno so Benoit could be ready for his YouTube interview the following morning.
With Benoit was at the YouTube headquarters all day, I took the Chevy Malibu (awful, awful boat of a car) north, across the Bay Bridge, and south to Oakland. Random adventures in the Chabot Regional Park/Redwood Regional Park.
View from the park
Lunch was In-N-Out Burger in....maybe Alameda?
Pretty good, but not amazing.
Another adventure was wandering around the Eden Landing Ecological Reserve which was a strange place that I got lost in a housing development trying to find. I passed one friendly mountain biker and otherwise thought I might have been locked in (had to enter through a gated fence). After this walk it was time to go meet Benoit again.
After retrieving Benoit from YouTube we headed south to Belmont to go rock climbing with Joe and Anami at Planet Granite. Benoit and I took the safety course and then did a few climbs. We celebrated with burritos in San Mateo then headed back to the hotel in San Bruno.
Tuesday we took a road trip to the coast, visiting Santa Cruze, Hallcrest Vineyards in Felton, and a nearby redwood forest. We took the coastal route 1 north to Half Moon Bay, where Benoit had eaten dinner previously while at Pycon, a computer science conference. We had dinner at Cetrella but were not terribly impressed though Benoit was impressed the first time he dined there. We will probably be back at some point.
After dinner, we drove back to San Bruno to return the rental car and fly back to Boston on the red eye. We left San Francisco with a great impression of the city and some encouraging news from Yelp!
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