Goodbye to San Francisco

I can't count the number of times we were asked how we liked San Francisco. Someone here referred to it as Vancouver on steroids. Perhaps. I can honestly say I loved it, but am glad I don't live here. It is a beautiful city in a beautiful area, but it was great to get back home to our sleepy little town. San Francisco is a place I'd be happy to visit anytime - especially if we had time to visit the neighboring parks and small communities. I guess I'm still a country girl at heart.
So here are a few more highlights:
Saturday night party on the USS Hornet Aircraft Carrier.

 Einar getting an award for IBS Manitoba's sales

Sunday Morning Volunteer Opportunity

Packing food for Feed the Hungry Children organization

 Sunday afternoon walk to the Ferry Building

Dinner on our own at New Delhi Restaurant.  Highly recommended!

MONDAY - I had a lot of time to myself, and was able to have coffee with a dear friend, Eleanor, who I've only seen a handful of times, but she is one of people I have clicked with and look forward to seeing every time we come to convention.  After coffee, I decided it was a good day to do some sightseeing on my own.

The lineup for the cable car was crazy, and it didn't help that one of the cars had to be towed because the brakes weren't working.  The wait was about an hour - and this is on a regular Monday morning!!  I can't imagine what it would be like in summertime or on a nice weekend! But I had hours to kill...

 Turning the roundabout to the right position for the next car.

 Ghirardelli Square.  I wanted to have the famous San Francisco Clam Chowder in a Sourdough Bread Bowl while I was here.  So I went to the diner here.  They were all out of clam chowder, so I asked if they had any sandwiches made with the sourdough bread.  "No!" The waiter said, "You can't make sandwiches with the sourdough - it's a bowl!"  Um, okay!

Yup, I finally got my clam chowder in the sourdough bowl.  Worth the long walk to find it!!

There may have been faster ways back to the hotel, but since we're traveling tomorrow at 4 am, I thought I'd pick up some gluten free muffins from Mariposa Baking at the ferry building.  We had their cinnamon buns and quiche on Sunday and they were marvelous.  By the time I got back to the hotel, I'm sure I walked 5 miles or more. 

It nice to find good gluten free foods while travelling!

For gluten free eating in San Francisco, I'd recommend the following: 

Bakeries -  

http://www.mariposabaking.com/ 

https://canyonglutenfree.com/ - bought their 7-grain loaf at Target for our travels.  I must admit I double checked the bag several times to see if I'd made a mistake and bought regular whole-grain bread.  It was that good!!

Restaurants -
http://piermarket.com/ Awesome seafood, and lots of choices for Einar.
New Delhi on Ellis - Most Indian food is GF naturally, so we weren't surprised that eating GF was easy here.
Most of our meals were at the hotel, and they always had gluten free choices available. Maybe if I had stuck to GF, I would have avoided the additional pounds that found me during this holiday!