San Francisco A2K Gathering - April 9-12, 2004

That's great news, c.i. And thanks for reviving the topic.

We are really looking forward to our visit to the Bay Area and with all of the people we only know now as words on a monitor.

BTW, here is the thread you were looking for. (The link goes to the most recent posts. I found it through the Search function at the top simply by entering 'san francisco'.)

Bookmark

Pdid and george, I'm happy to see "some people" are reading this! LOL Since time is getting shorter to the SAN FRANCISCO A2K GATHERING, I think it behooves us to keep the communication lines open. When I did my last count, there were over 20 people interested, but I'm wondering how many are still planning to come?

Thanks Ciceromne. What dates are you considering?

Psst, george...look in the thread title...

george, These are only the "official" dates of the get-together. Some people will arrive earlier and some will leave later than these dates.

Oh! The thread title !!!

Thanks

So who's in and who's out?

me and the nun (Diane) have reservations at the Nob Hill Motor Inn (but we are going to stay there anyway)

Our reservations are for April 9-10-11 (checking out on the 11th). I'm getting excited! SF is my favorite city--tied with NYC.
PDiddie, you should check with your hotel about parking. Sometimes valet means $20.00 a day. The Nob Hill has free parking.

Diane, Good point. We paid $34.50 for valet parking at the Rex Hotel for less than 24 hours. Parking in SF is pricey! ouch.

Aaack, I just posted on the other thread, will transfer it over here. I just decided in the last day or two to go for sure, glad to see Dys and Di will make it there too, yippee!!


edit to quote my post on the old SF thread -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Osso does still plan to come to SF then - it's been in doubt lately so I hadn't posted until I decided to "go for it".
That friend I mentioned - who knows if she will be busy that week, we'll see. I had been planning to stay some extra days to see other friends, and now I have a work project to check out in Napa Valley so I probably won't stay extra in SF. So now I might prefer to see a2kers only, rather than try to arrange friends in the area meeting too... too distracting.

Now that my vision is normalizing, I still hope to do at least a little gallery looking and would love to have company.

JJorge has said several times he'll be there.
Mikey seemed to think he would too.

I don't know about Dys and Diane. I do very much hope they'll go for it too.
Fealola had mentioned she might try to come up, possibly deciding at the last minute.

I hope to figure out where I'm staying in the next day or two. Maybe I'll try to stay where pdiddies are booked.. or where I'm already booked (but for the wrong weekend), or where dys and diane have picked, if they are still going. Plus whether I'm driving or flying. Stay tuned...
Anyway, back on that in the next few days.

So, CI, how much was the Rex a night? Were there bookshelves in the lobby (I know they did a recent renovation..)?

Quoting you, CI, from your comment about the Rex on the Flower thread...
I asked if they could give us special rates, but the guy said they'll match any price we get from <hotels.com>.

Hmmm, really???

On the other hand, if I do check the project in Napa, I need to drive, hmmm, again.

We ended up paying $152.50 for the night plus $34.50 for parking. I made the reservation for the Rex on the same day I got reservations to see the Lion King at the Orpheum. I originally paid $174.50, but got a $22.00 refund about a month ago, because I saw it advertised at the lower price. I usually don't like to spend too much on lodgings, and spend my money on good food. Our friends in San Francisco treated us to dinner on Friday, so we got home about 11PM. The Lion King was fantastic! It's really amazing what they do with puppets. We were seated in the very back of the orchestra, but we could see everything quite well. I highly recommend the show, if you can get tickets. We got up rather late on Friday. We walked to Chinatown where my wife bought some of her favorite snack food at a bakery, and we had breakfast at a small restaurant located across the street from the main gate of Chinatown. We then walked back to the hotel, and packed our clothes. We drove to Japantown, and did a little shopping, and went to the coffee shop for mochi (Japanese rice cake) and hot green tea for a snack. We then drove to the Legion of Honor, and spent a little over an hour looking at their displays. They have a special showing of photos taken in India in the mid-19th century. I recognized some of the places such as the iron pillar in Delhi, the Red Fort in Agra, and the Taj Mahal. We also saw quite a few sculptures by Rodin. From there, we drove to Golden Gate Park and visited the greenhouse and the Japanese Tea Garden. Since we had a little rian, we sat in the tea house and drank some tea. We walked around for about 20 minutes, then drove to Stonestown, the shopping center close to Cal State University of San Francisco. After about an hour there, we drove to our friends home on 23rd avenue. We went to dinner about 5:30, and returned to their place about 7PM. I had the best 1.5" thick pork chops with bean sauce. Spent a couple hours at their place, then we were on our way home. It was a mini-vacation for my wife and I.

Was that restaurant across from the gate Cafe Presse? (it's around there somewhere..)

Yes. They have newspapers from Germany, and I think there were several German tourists there.

bookmarking again

To whet some appetites for the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. Not a bad venue for a get-together.