September 16, 2005
Day Three Of September Trip To Bay Area
Woke up in the Apex room of the Hotel des Arts which was greener than green and walked out to the San Fran air which was bluer than blue. Trekked down to the Ferry Building in the Embarcadero which holds an incredible farmers market every Saturday. Much to our surprise the one and only political booth was republican and manned by a skateboard model. Or maybe Arnold's son, who knows? Most of the time we were there he was quite lonely.
After a breakfast at the Market Bar - his good, mine not so - and some taste testing around the organics, we schlepped the bag back to the Bart, headed back to Colma. Our old friends from Montara picked us up and took us to Rockaway Beach for lunch at Nick's where they were serving a special dish du jour called Nora Benedict. Was this a play on the Nick & Nora thing that the primarily over sixty crowd winked about ordering martinis with their eggs?
Nick's was established some time in the 19-teens or twenties and appears to not have changed much. I felt very self concious in my ferme ta Bush tee-shirt I was wearing that only an hour before in the big city I had compliments on several times over. Despite the surfers in the water and in the parking lot, the diners looked more than conservative. JP said it reminded her of the places in Palm Beach and Ft. Lauderdale we used to eat at and join the old-timers in their boiled foods, though Nick's was decidedly more haute cuisine compared to the early-bird cuisine of Flah.
Speaking of which, I never thought I'd see the day where my firmly attached to Florida friend would see the light of California again, let alone the cold, grey part. In her words, she was "born freezing right out of the womb". If she were "sitting on the equator with satan she'd ask for a sweater". Lucky for her, she now gets to buy all the cashmere Neiman Marcus and good thrift stores provide.
We had one more short visit with the shih tzus and a look out at the ocean cliffs before the seven hour drive back to LaLa.
We couldn't have planned our trip better if we planned it.
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