Womantraveler was on an extended vacation when Typepad featured her blog this week. Stay tuned -- there are lots of stories ahead...Meanwhile, as it's a deadline, the Italian Street Painting Festival in San Rafael, CA returns this weekend -- and if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, check it out. This is how close you can get to the artists!
The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament has wrapped up, but it's not too late to make a note to be in Pebble next New Year's Eve. The Inn at Spanish Bay throws a bash that's worth planning for, even though the details might not be available until after Thanksgiving. On December 31, 2007, the inn threw its most elaborate New Year's event ever, celebrating 20 years of auld lang syne parties with 5 bands and DJs, lavish buffets and terrific fun. Taking advantage of the New Year's Eve package (offered with one- or two-night stays), we settled in at the inn for a couple of days in comfortably appointed 
accomodations with a cozy fireplace and spectacular views from ocean to coastal hills. Happily the "house restaurant" is one of the best versions of the popular Roy's restaurants and Chef Roy Yamaguchi's signature Hawaiian-fusion cuisine in a casual setting.
It goes without saying that the Monterey Peninsula location about 2 1/2 hours south of San Francisco is fabulous -- if the weather cooperates. The wild coast can be shrouded in fog, but the spectacular sunny days are unforgettable. A quick reminder of day trips in the area -- Carmel, Monterey, 17-Mile Drive that provides some access to the scenic coast and, farther south, Big Sur, at the moment a coastal perch for migrations of whales, elephant seals and California condors.
Unfortunately Carmel 
has deteriorated from a quaint artists' community surrounded by elegant wealth to an overexpensive tourist trap overrun with bad or at best mediocre shops and galleries and often fairly outrageous taste, the kind that befits big spenders. The statement 
seems to be, "if I'm expensive and I flaunt it, I must be good." Sorry, but cost and quality do not necessarily align in my book.
Monterey has the world-famous aquarium, which is awesome, and an appealingly funky spirit fed by casual seaside food and fun. We hear that the nearby Carmel Valley Ranch resort in a less frenetic and lush inland valley setting has undergone quite a renovation and brought in celebrity chef Michel Richard's Citronelle restaurant.
The Northern California insiders' new retro getaway is Nick's Cove along a curvy stretch of the Marin County coast. It's hot because its impressario is restaurateur Pat Kuleto (Fog City Diner, Boulevard, Postrio and a 
host of other signature San Francisco dining destinations), supports the credentials of organic farming and sustainable fishing and is sufficiently out of the way for a cache of remoteness. 
Plenty of people have gotten the word in the past six months, though -- it's already difficult if not impossible to get a reservation on short notice, although they do have a bar and seat walk-ins.
The 45-minute jaunt west of San Rafael, Novato or Petaluma or about an hour north of San Francisco snakes along hairpin turns through vast protected West Marin 
hills and dairy farms before reaching the town of Marshall on the Tomales Bay. This coastal Highway 1 stretch from Point Reyes Station on the south to Bodega Bay on the north is across from the Point Reyes National Seashore, a coastal wilderness abundant with wildlife. Landside, it's dotted with late-1800s onetime railroad towns and farms of cultivated oyster beds. It's an area full of history, as the story of Nick's illustrates. And far enough from modern civilization, in fact, that even cell phones can't find you here.
Turning a 100-year-old restaurant that was a local favorite and adding 12 pricey bungalows was a bumpy eight-year journey for Kuleto and his longtime partner, Executive Chef Mark Franz. They've preserved the ambiance -- the restaurant is casual roadhouse-style, and the bungalows were built or 
remodeled from wood-rotting shacks. They are perched along the water's edge, where you can hear the lap of the tide hitting the bungalow pilings and across the road in the groove of a hill. Each cottage is unique. 
All are decorated in comfortable antiques with luxury appointments -- high-thread count linens, heated bathroom floors, flat screen TVs and Wi-Fi. Winter rates range from $165 to $595 a night, which suggests what the summer season will fetch.
We sampled the inventiveness of Nick's kitchen staff during a wine tasting dinner hosted by Ross Halleck. You can't go to Nick's and not have oysters, which are farmed in the area by Hog Island Oyster Company, Tomales Bay Oyster Co. and others. Halleck Vineyard in the Russian River Valley produces just under 2000 cases of Pinot Noir. That's not far from Nick's, which has become Halleck's local hangout. His Hallberg Vineyards Pinot Noir 2005 was paired with a butternut squash flan, delightfully rich and nutty with white truffle oil. His Three Sons Cuvee Pinot Noir 2006 accompanied the wood grilled Vermont quail stuffed with local chanterelles, pancetta, cannellini bean puree and a balsamic reduction.
This, of course, wasn't the regular Nick's menu, which is harvested daily from the bay out the back door. We'll head back to do that soon. Kuleto, meanwhile, is hard to keep up with -- he opened two new restaurants in San Francisco's Embarcadero waterfront to more fanfare in late January -- Epic Roasthouse and Waterbar.
The food and wine mecca of San Francisco continues to present the fineries of gourmet high-style with the simplicity of exquisite neighborhood casual. This certainly comes in the city's restaurants of all sizes and shapes as part of its neighborhood-based identity. Now comes an abundance of local wine bars, where visitors or residents can experience the tasting rooms of Napa and Sonoma wines, Burgundy and New Zealand grapes, and more. These often funky places are not pretentious, but they are knowledgeable. The connoisseur experience is just down the street, with the world at your fingertips.
Not that wine bars are novel, but they are increasingly more prevalent and certainly more accessible to the unitiated. For a "flight" of small quantities of several wines, you can sample a much wider variety than a single winery's tasting room offers out in the Valley. Clearly these venues provide two different types of entertainment -- to go deeper into a single winery's selections or to go wider by experimenting with new and unexpected options at the city wine bar. Yet, while wineries are pushing sales of bottles to go, wine bars offer comfortable seating encouraging lingering and conversation. As a womantraveler, it's good to have the options.
If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area June 9-10, be sure to visit San Rafael's famous Italian Street Painting Festival. Sponsored by Youth in Arts, the festival splashes several blocks of downtown San Rafael with colorful and detailed chalk paintings -- plus music and food -- for 60,000 visitors a year. San Rafael is 25 minutes north of the city across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County. Get there early to see the paintings develop, or chat with the artists once the work is done. Here are photos from the 2006 event.
I was unprepared for the awesome grandeur of California's Yosemite Valley. 
The expressive images captured by photographer Ansel Adams
Our four-hour drive east from San Francisco slowly curved up Route 120 to the Big Oak Flat entrance station at 4880 feet above sea level, then down to the quiet jewel of Yosemite Valley. Still a high altitude at 3900 feet, you feel cupped in a hand by such imposing granite monoliths as El Capitan (7569 feet) and Half Dome (8836) ringing the views. While the National Park is 1169 square miles, the valley itself, formed by glacial erosion over millions of years, is only one mile across at its widest point and seven miles long. Standing on the valley floor, the only way to look is up.
We visited in the late spring, while Yosemite Falls, the tallest waterfall in North America and fifth tallest in the world (at 2425 feet), was 
roaring down at its 2007 peak rate of 2000 cubic feet per second. In California, spring is the time of forest waterfalls because the winter snow pack is melting, giving way to dry summers. This year, with the rainfall at only 40 percent of normal, there are concerns that the waterfalls and lush blooming meadows of Yosemite will recede more rapidly into summer. The dogwoods, of course, come only in spring, but in any case, it's always best to visit Yosemite before the crowds around 
Memorial Day and leave around Labor Day. Reservations at the elegant Ahwahnee Hotel, said to be the most beautiful in the National Park system, must be made weeks and months ahead. (The 1920's era hotel is already sold out for the summer.)
A newcomer to the California wilderness, I learned many things by visiting Yosemite, most memorably that "Sierra" is plural. 
So the term is "the Sierra," when referring to the 400-mile long, 75-mile wide, at times 14,000 feet mountain range east of the California valley (not "the Sierras"). Thus, the Sierra Club, founded in 1892 by John Muir and a group of San Francisco Bay Area environmentalists to preserve and protect the American wilderness. I also now correctly use the terms, sequoia and redwood trees. While related, they are not interchangeable names for the same species. The giant sequoia, the most massive living thing on earth, grows only in a limited number of forest groves, as in Yosemite, some living up to 3000 years. Redwoods, taller and more conifer-like, require the coastal fog to thrive. The South Entrance, via Route 41, takes you past the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias.
We entered the Ahwahnee through the parking lot of tall incense cedars, also often confused with the sequoia because of their reddish and feathery bark.
Clos Pegase, a temple to both wine and art, is the Napa Valley winery I recommend friends visiting when 
they're searching through the hundreds of options. Designed in the 
post-modern style by architect Michael Graves, the winery also houses the internationally renown art collection of owner Jan Schrem. In addition to the winery, a visitor can take a tour (including self-guided with narrative) of the 24 sculptures in the gardens and porticos as well as the art in interior galleries. One of the most famous in the collection is Henry Moore's "Mother Earth," who faces west and is usually bathed in sunlight.
The winery's name is a tribute to Pegasus, the mythological Greek winged horse 
who touched the earth with his hooves and unleashed the sacred spring of the muses, the wine that flows from grapes. Bacchanalian pleasure is also suggested here in a humorous way. Touring Clos Pegase 
mixes the fineries of an art museum, a wine cellar and the expansive and welcoming beauty of a Napa Valley estate.
You notice I've yet to talk about the wines, 
but they are 
stunning and carefully produced. Small berries, thicker skins, well-drained soil planted in old vines that are the progenitors of really fine wines. Wines are harvested by hand, not by machine, and crops are not densely planted. Our favorites are the Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Merlot offerings. We were fortunate to visit on a slow day and have our own private tour guide, who took us down into the cellars, where art is displayed purposefully as well. From earliest times, people's enjoyment of wine led to them to embrace art and music, and there's a lovely taste of the experience right here.
The Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants by San Francisco Chronicle food critic Michael Bauer are out for 2007, and Womantraveler consistently recommends several of them with first-hand knowledge to her visitors. Special favorites are Betlenut (Pan-Asian along the city's Union Street), Buckeye Roadhouse (Mill Valley in Marin County), Delfina (casual Italian in the city's Mission District), Gary Danko (elegant night out in the city), Hog Island Oyster Co. (in the Ferry Building), Silks (revived in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel), Sushi Ran (with a great wine bar in Sausalito) and Terra (Tuscan Cal-Asian in Napa Valley). Not that we are vindictive, but we saw some justice in the removal of Poggio's in Sausalito, a one-time favorite that plunged into indifference in service. Incidentally, there's been quite a dust-up lately between the food establishment and food bloggers about restaurant reviews, but in a metro area where food lies at the heart of the culture, we find Bauer and his his blog reliable.
San Francisco's Presidio park, the old military base offering one of the most spectacular locations near the Golden Gate Bridge, has become a center of culture and food since "Star Wars'" George Lucas moved his studios there two years ago from Marin County. Lucasfilm's 850,000-square foot campus, called the Letterman Digital Arts Center after a previous hospital on the site, is a series of new buildings with the latest technology yet architecturally compatible with national historic landmark military buildings dating from the Civil War to the Cold War and neighboring Victorian residences.
The park's revival is seen in the many new eateries populated by employees of 
Lucasfilm and nonprofits housed on the sprawling Presidio property, as well as locals and visitors who have discovered them. First of all, you can dine and, on a stellar day, see the splendiferous Golden Gate Bridge. It's a lively setting -- employees take their lunch breaks, walking or biking down to the San Francisco Bay or nearby bridge trails.
What I especially enjoy as a Womantraveler stems from the global variety and pleasant service. Young pros spawning their culinary careers elsewhere in the city or known quantities expanding to the hot new scene have brought a vitality for innovation offered in a casually stylish way. We especially enjoyed Dish and La Terrasse. The Presidio Social Club recently got a solid review in the San Francisco Chronicle, and Pres a Vi is a wine bar extraordinaire and sibling of the popular Walnut Creek tapas-style restaurant.
I'm often asked for the latest hot San Francisco restaurants. That's a tough call in a city where food is a hobby and innovation is a norm. That said, here are the latest hot lists for 2007:
San Francisco 2007 James Beard nominees
Open Table and AOL's Best of 2007
Rising Star Chefs from the San Francisco Chronicle
