Visiting the Bay Area

A place to collect notes about visiting the San Francisco Bay area.

Things I inflict on visitors:

• The Musee Mechanique, http://www.museemecaniquesf.com/ , up in the Pier 39 area is very cool. Grab a ride on a refurbished old street car, saved from the wrecking yards of cities across the country and painted up in the original colors, down the Embarcadero from Market Street up to the Pier 39 are. There's the usual tourist-y stuff up there, so I generally avoid it, although there's a pretty good aquarium with a walk-through tunnel, an old liberty ship and a submarine that I haven't been in yet, and the tours to Alcatraz (that are only worth doing if you get the audio tour, which is like a good This American Life episode with the island to give it atmosphere).

I like the nature of Marin County. You can do worse than taking the exit just north of the Golden Gate Bridge and going west, out to the old WWII era gun emplacements and Fort Cronkhite, there's an easy to get to beach there. Muir Woods is going to be massively crowded on a summer weekend, but there are shuttles running from Highway 1 and 101 in Mill Valley out there, or you could go up to Roys Redwood Preserve:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Roys+Redwood+Preserve,+Marin+County,+CA&sll=38.041602,-122.644501&sspn=0.264981,0.617981&ie=UTF8&t=h&z=14 http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Roys+Redwood+Preserve,+Marin+County,+CA&sll=38.041602,-122.644501&sspn=0.264981,0.617981&ie=UTF8&t=h&z=14

From Sir Francis Drake take Nicasio Valley Road just past the golf course, park on the east side of the road, hike in and explore. From Petaluma you'd come out the back way, west out D street which becomes Petaluma-Pt Reyes road, left on Nicasio Valley Road.

• If you have a day to explore, hiking out to the coast from http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=1+Point+Reyes+National+Hist+Site+Rd,+Marin+County,+CA&sll=38.039067,-122.800798&sspn=0.016562,0.038624&ie=UTF8&ll=38.039371,-122.799983&spn=0.016562,0.038624&t=h&z=15&iwloc=A leads to a place where a creek flows down through a hole in the rocks (that you can walk through and over) and gives you beach, coastal cliffs and a cave, wildflowers, albino deer (although they're in the process of culling them, I'm not sure how many are left), and all that.

Food-wise, it's hard to beat the Bay Area on food. High end world-class highlights include Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Manresa down on the Peninsula, Dry Creek Kitchen in Healdsburg, and the French Laundry. These are the sorts of places that my peers save up to go to...

Things I inflict on visitors just because they're "Only in the Bay Area" places and they're actually (somewhat) affordable are Cafe Gratitude, raw vegan with a woo woo new age attitude and the deserts are amazing, and Millenium Restaurant, basic good vegetarian. I've heard good things about Per Se, Thomas Keller's lower end restaurant, and there's lots o' stuff in The City. You could do worse than walking through the Ferry Building (where the ferry from Larkspur lands in SF) and sampling the wares there.

In Petaluma, Dempsey's, on the east side of the pedestrian bridge across the turning basin, is good pub food, they've got their own farm for some of their ingredients. Aram's is cheap middle-eastern, their pomegranate chicken is pretty darned good. There's a number of Thai and Indian places, but if you're bouncing out of the city there's better ethnic down there (although Namaste Cafe strip mall with the Orchard Supply Hardware at the Petaluma Blvd North exit off 101 is pretty darn good Indian).