When other people anticipate a trip to New York City, they might think about fine dining. What’s the latest new cuisine to taste? Which famous chef should we try? Where do we need to make a reservation? (Zie Nederlands versie beneden!) Or they may be looking for “ethnic” food: Chinese, for example, or Cuban, or…
The Jane Hotel: Nautical Flair
When I entered the lobby and spotted the stuffed peacocks on the wall, mounted vertically with their faded tail feathers dangling, I knew the Jane Hotel wasn’t a run-of-the-mill hotel. I had suspected it already when I booked the room. First of all, it was suspiciously cheap for New York City—I paid $115 a night—yet…
How my citizenship hit me in the gut
One day last month, when I was walking through Oakland on my way to meet a friend in Berkeley, I passed the old Paramount Theater. This is a gorgeous restored Art Deco theater that I had paused to admire every time I’d walked past that week. That day, though, the theater was open at 8:30…
Only in America!
This will be the last of my posts from my recent trip to the US, and it’ll mostly be photos. Every time I visit the US, certain things strike me as odd. They’re not really odd, I don’t think, to Americans, but as an expatriate, they seem strange to me now. I did one such…
An unmissable walk in San Francisco
There’s so much to see in San Francisco, but there’s one thing I recommend to anyone visiting San Francisco: a walk up and down Telegraph Hill. Back when I lived in San Francisco, when things got a bit much for me, or just when I needed some time for myself, I would take this walk,…
California’s overlooked mission history
We often forget that California history goes further back than the “49-ers,” the gold prospectors who hurried to California once gold was discovered in 1848. The first European settlers in California were not “49-ers;” they were Spanish. California belonged to Spain from 1769 to 1821, and then to the Mexicans until the US got it back in 1848 after winning the Mexican-American…
Haight-Ashbury nostalgia
Back in the 1990’s, I lived in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, the birthplace of the hippie movement and the epicenter of the Summer of Love. When my daughter was born in 1992, I decided not to go back to work right away. Paying for childcare would have cost much of my take-home pay, so…
Awesome customer service!
“I’ll have a bagel with cream cheese and lox and a diet Coke.” “Awesome! I’ll get it for you right away.” This is a typical exchange with a server in a restaurant here in San Francisco. It’s also the same at a store. “I’d like to buy this shirt.” “Awesome! That’ll be 13 dollars and…
Ghirardelli’s chocolatiers
Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory, a tourist destination in San Francisco, is offering something new: a “chocolatier” program. The “factory” isn’t really a factory anymore. Ghirardelli’s chocolate production has moved to a more modern factory out of town and the historic buildings near Fisherman’s Wharf are now a complex of shops, with an emphasis on everything chocolate….