kadmium

Katie and I are finally taking a trip. Yay! It’s been a while since we got out of Alaska, and we’ve got these two coupons from Alaska Airlines for $150.00 each that are going to expire in January 2003, plus we finally crossed the magical 40k threshold on our Alaska Airlines miles. So we’re going to go to San Francisco to see some friends we haven’t seen since we left Texas and celebrate our fifth anniversary and Halloween, all in one big, blowout four-day weekend.

We used some of our miles to get our tickets for half price, then used the coupons to bring the round-trip cost of each ticket down to $51.00. w00t!

Now we need some advice.

We’ve both been to San Francisco, but never with each other, and we need some recommendations for hotels and restaurants. We’d like to stay in San Francisco proper, and it would be nice if we could keep the cost of the room in $100 range. Hotels, motels, B&Bs, whatever. If you know of a nice place to stay in San Francisco, let us know.

We are also planning on spending some money on our anniversary dinner. The restaurants in Anchorage are pretty good, but there are only four or five really, really good ones, and we’ve been to all of them. A few times. So something new. We haven’t really talked much about what kind of food we want, so that’s pretty open, but I can tell you that we probably aren’t interested in cream sauces (traditional French food, for example) or Mexican. Other than that, it’s up for grabs: Italian, seafood, Asian, steakhouse, small, big, whatever.

Oh, and the other restaurant criterion is good service. This is mostly my bugaboo, but I really hate paying a lot of money for good food and having it served to me by a waiter who is either obsequious and in the way or snotty. I like an efficient, polite waiter who knows when I need something and otherwise stays away. This is not a deal killer. If you know of a restaurant that has really, really good food and historically spotty service, we can live with that.

Dude. Stay at the Triton. http://www.hoteltriton.com/
they have theme rooms.

Comment posted by mike | September 3, 2002 03:00 PM

Have you ever used Priceline? I've had great luck with them, like when I stayed at the Westin in downtown Philadelphia for $55/night. Of course you don't get a choice of the specific hotel, but you can choose the part of town it's in and the quality level.

Comment posted by BKM | September 4, 2002 06:01 AM

I haven't looked up restaurants yet, but will do so by tomorrow or so.

However, if you rent a car, and don't want to stay in S.F. all the time, go two directions:

Go south to the Monterey Peninsula and take the 17 mile Drive.
Go north to Tiburon. Its pretty and is a great way to feel like you are in a smaller community and still be on the water.

Heather says she would stay in S.F. the whole time. Have you guys been to S.F. before now? I can't remember.

Comment posted by Ruth | September 9, 2002 02:03 PM

Thanks for the tips, folks. We haven't really decided about staying just in SF or getting out and around. There are at least a couple of people that we'd like to see who don't live in SF proper, so we might end up getting car, but I really like the idea of not having to rent one or drive.

Priceline sounds like a pretty good idea, except that I think I'd rather spend a few extra bucks and pick my own hotel.

The Triton looks pretty cool, but their rooms start at $169/night, which is a little steep. We're still thinking about it, though.

Comment posted by mccreath | September 12, 2002 06:16 PM