Belmont Greek Festival - Labor Day Weekend in the Bay Area

Well, this post is a bit late, but you know - use it to plan for next year! :-)

Labor Day is just all fun-filled festival madness. We were able to make it to two of the three we wanted to attend before we just burned out.

The Belmont Greek Festival was something we've been hearing about all year so I was pretty excited to go. It turned out to be smaller than I expected but still nice. If you have kids, it is perfect - half the space was dedicated to kids' activities! There was a stage area where kids from the church / school were performing renditions of the Greek myths - surprisingly good performances. One kid playing Narcissus was hilarious - totally rocked that role (maybe too much??).

 In the back of the church was another stage area where some serious business was happening - we caught part of a table dancing show. Get your mind out of the gutter - not the first kind of table dancing you think of, but rather THIS:

Impressive.

There were some booths selling arts, crafts and jewelry, but very few. The real draw seems to be the food. There were vendors set up outside but the word on yelp reviews was to head inside the church for the real deal. We went through line and $45 later had spanakopita, souvlaki, tiropita, and so many other things I cannot remember. We topped all that off with the hunt for loukoumades - these deep fried donut things with honey and walnuts were just ...yum.

Worth every penny and the food coma afterwards

Unless you have kids or you are really into the stage performances, the festival goes by pretty fast. We were there two hours at most and left for a food coma induced nap.

-- Happy Festivals!

Hiking Sugarloaf Mountain: San Francisco Peninsula

The park has continued to be a bit of a mystery for me - I have yet to find an official site with a trail map. However, Google Maps comes through for me. You can see the starting point and the trails clearly on the map. This park is dog-friendly but full of critters, including a coyote that watched us from up the trail one day.

Starting at the intersection on the map, head west on Bartlett Way. There are a couple of houses on the undeveloped road (one of which has lost the bridge section of it's driveway - yikes!) then a large gate that enters the park itself. As you walk along the creek, you'll see evidence of an old home and horse corral that were on this road. There is a bit of urban myth / history about this area in this blog. Whatever the history might be, this stretch can be pretty lonely and just ... eerie. Can't explain the feeling, but it is odd.

Maybe part of the eeriness is from another random burnt-out car you'll find when you turn right up the Saltson Trail. The trail gets steeper and as you climb, watch the trees on the left. You'll see the car, part of the collective of burnt out cars in this area.

What the...? Not like there is a road nearby....

You'll reach a junction where you have a choice to make. The path the left takes you up to the houses. The path downhill takes you toward Laurelwood Park. To your right is a wonderful, steep trail to the top of the mountain! Go ahead, climb it! It rises at about a 45 degree angle in most places but it really isn't a long climb overall. From the top, you get 360 degree views of the area.

Fog in the distance, coming over the mountains

From the top, you can extend the hike down into Laurelwood Park where the trail narrows and can be heavy with poison oak. You emerge in the well-groomed park itself - a bit disconcerting after the wildness of Sugarloaf! Alternately, you can re-trace your steps - coming back down the path can be steep and there is loose gravel along the way. Watch yourself. 

And watch for coyotes, deer and bunnies watching you from the side of the trail. ;-)

-- Happy Climbing!

Breaking from the Crowd: Peninsula Chefs

As San Franciscans, we are very proud of our local culinary talents. "Big-box" and francises are frowned on and openly blocked at times. The irony - as you leave the city, folks assume all you have is McDonalds and second-rate chefs who couldn't "make it" in the city.

An interesting trend says the opposite: some chefs have tired of the city or come down the peninsula to do things their way, to find less expensive locations and to take root in smaller, growing downtowns.

My favorite example: The Refuge in San Carlos. The menu: burgers, pastrami, belgian beer, foie gras. Eclectic to say the least, but the shining stars are the beer and the pastrami. I can't say I was a huge fan of pastrami before - it was one of those "meh" things. However, I clearly had never had REAL pastrami - anything pastrami-based on the menu is stunning. The foie gras is always amazing and the seasonal changes to the menu give enough variety that if I ever wanted to try something else, I could. Vegetarians are not left out - there are usually a couple of vegetarian dishes and steamed veggies on the menu. But wait - it gets better! They have a nice covered outdoor area with heat lamps and they are dog-friendly!

In San Mateo, 231 Ellsworth boasts their chef left Masa's in San Francisco to join the peninsula crowd - and clearly, this has worked well for both the chef and the restaurant. They are both Michelin recommended and won the Opentable 2011 Diners' Choice award.

Do you have a favorite peninsula place that highlights an escapist chef? Please share it!

-- Happy Eating!

Hiking the Bay Area: Best tools for finding the best spots

One of the amazing things about the San Francisco Bay area is all the open space and protected green space around us. For such a densely populated area, we are really fortunate in how many accessible parks and open spaces exist. Even better, the terrain varies significantly within a small radius: hike the redwoods, walk the beach, jog along the Bay, hike in the golden hills. Your pick.

So how do you find the best hiking?

I've been in the Bay Area over 10 years and one of my favorite sites is still Bay Area Hiker. The author takes you on a turn-by-turn of each hike, rates the difficulty level, tells you the distance and the time to complete the hike. It is also sorted by kid-friendly, dog-friendly, easy hikes and more. It is the first place I visit when looking for something new to hike.

BA Hiker now has a blog at http://bayareahiker.blogspot.com/

Another long-time favorite has been Geocaching.com. When this first hit the scene, we were living in Seattle and it was a big hit there. It still seems to be a bit of an obscure "sport" but it is a fantastic way to find hiking trails you would not normally explore. Even if you don't play the game, you can use it find great spots in your area.

These days, mobile apps have made hiking even more accessible. Of course, the first awesome hiking app is Google Maps on your phone. In most areas, you can see the trails marked on the map for those times when you make a wrong turn. This saved my a*s at least once when I stubbornly kept going on a washed out trail and had to find my way back to something that was actually a trail.

For those of us needing dog-friendly hiking areas (on-leash or off-leash), the Dog Parks app is very good. It gives you the basic information you need to find locations that are dog-friendly. On a recent trip to Half Moon Bay, this became an essential tool to find a beach that allowed dogs.

And my new favorite app: Geocaching on the iPhone. I have always been a bit annoyed by having to run batches, download them into my GPS and then remember to take my GPS with me. Or have batteries in the device that aren't dead. I know, get over it right? I was always hoping for something that would just tell me what was around me - I may not always have time to plan ahead and download caches to a GPS. I guess I wasn't the only one - Geocaching.com has an iPhone app that totally rocks. Even though my mobile is on ATT and my coverage is ... "spotty" at best, I can almost always get enough signal to track and download the cache info. It has only failed me once when I was deep in a creek canyon.

I'm always looking for the newest and greatest - what is your favorite?

-- Happy Trails!

PHOTOS: San Francisco Weird

Corner of Haight and Laguna in San Francisco:

Random along a street on the peninsula, near San Mateo:

-- Happy (Weird) Travels!

Bay Area: Treasure Island Flea Market

On a recent Saturday, we decided to brave the bridge and head over to Treasure Island for a new flea market. Treasure Island is one of those Bay Area places you tend to forget. It is an odd place to reach - you have to halfway cross the Bay Bridge and exit to the left. If you are coming from the San Francisco side, you don't have to pay the toll coming or going - but from the Oakland side you will have to pay up. The views are worth the effort though.

The city on the Bay: View from TI

The Bay Area flea market has seen a bit of a boom in the past year, growing from one major event a month to three a month. The grand-daddy of them all is the Alameda Flea Market (technically called the Alameda Point Antiques Faire) - never been, but I hear it is madness. The Candlestick Flea Market opened last year and again - haven't been. It was rained out most of last fall and we haven't made it yet this year.

The flea market at Treasure Island was an un-expected pleasure. It is still small so parking was simple at 9:30am and even getting there on the Bay Bridge was traffic free (shocking). The space between booths was wide enough that you could move freely and there was a good mix of vendors: steam punk jewelry, vintage clothes, new clothing, furniture (old and new), wine barrels and such, organic plants, costume jewelry, antique metal "stuff", and so on.

As an added bonus, FOOD. The mini-donut booth was awesome. Fresh made donuts with choices of topping. Yum yum. There were hot-dogs and a greek booth. Then there were the food trucks: garlic noodles, waffles and a few others I don't remember because I was so focused on getting garlic noodles.

The final bonus: the venue is dog-friendly and for paying our $3 entry, we received a card for free entry next time. 

And did I mention the totally awesome finds? Thankfully they even have an ATM on site. 

-- Happy Shopping!

Hiking: Burned out cars in Belmont

The San Francisco peninsula has tons of open spaces and terrific hiking areas. One of my favorite sites, Bay Area Hiker, does a great job of giving you all the info needed to find good hikes. Armed with an iPhone and the Geocaching app (or old school, using a GPS and the website), you can find all sorts of unexpected things along the trails.

Recently the little dog and I have been hiking in Belmont and we've noticed an odd thing: burned out / rusted cars. On the trails, far from any actual roads.

No road nearby

The first we found was off the Chaparral Trail in Water Dog Lake Park. At the time, I didn't have my geocaching equipment with me, but there is a geocache around here I think. A note on the website says this car is "maintained" by the park rangers.

The second one we found off the trail in the Sugarloaf / Laurelwood Park. We came in via the entrance off Laurel Creek Road, taking the Salson Trail. This was a weekday hike and the park was silent - when something shifted in the car, little dog and I both startled. It was almost guaranteed to be wildlife moving around, but too many years in San Francisco made me suspicious someone was living in it and since there was no cell coverage in that area - I didn't stick around to take photos. Next time!

Finally, the third one we've found was again in the Belmont open preserve space, along the Rambler trail heading toward Canyon Creek Trail. 

Car Bridge?

This one was just super-cool in my opinion. How on earth that car got there, I can't imagine - but to make it part of the trail was a very cool idea. 

Hipstamtic shot of the car bridge from the other side

It's still a mystery to me how these got down into these canyons. All of the cars seem to be from around the 50's, so maybe there was a road through here before. Highway 280 isn't far away, so there could have been a road through the hills and mountains. 

I'll leave you with this final mystery:

The sign is so old the tree grew around it. Trail is only 2 feet wide.

-- Happy Hiking!

Wine and Spirits: Alameda, CA

Sometimes there is just nothing like being a tourist in your own local area. Here in San Francisco, we tend to stay in the city on the weekends and avoid the traffic and toll booths. During Fleet Week in October, we decided to get out of the city and see what kind of trouble we could find.

We journeyed across the Bay Bridge to Alameda. Technically Alameda is an island, but it is pretty well connected to the mainland. Formerly a naval post, it is also blessed with some great views of the city.

View from St. George Spirits

Our first stop was St. George Spirits. These guys were the first to start distilling absinthe when it was re-legalized in the United States. Housed in an old hanger, their vodka reflects their home: Hanger One Vodka. This is consistently one of the best vodkas I have ever had. The "Straight" vodka is so smooth you won't know it is vodka. The infused vodkas are amazing - many infusions have a "fake" taste to them, as if the artificial flavor was added after distillation. Hanger One actually distills the fruit for the vodka and you can taste the difference. The Buddha's Hand vodka is superb. Frankly, I can't name one that isn't. They do limited releases and I'm still pining over the Chipolte Vodka - I so want another bottle but it is all gone and they don't know if / when they will distill it again.

Buddha Hand Vodka

Another big hit from the distillery is the new Firelit liquor. Brandy based, this is infused with cold-brewed Blue Bottle coffee - a Bay Area favorite. I'm not usually a fan of coffee liquors, but this one is extremely good. You can sip it alone and skip the espresso on summer nights!

We took the pup with us, and unfortunately St. George will not allow dogs into the tasting room. We didn't get an reason behind this, but I suspect it is because the tasting room and the distillery are all in one building.

Less than a mile away from St. George is the tasting room for Rosenblum Cellars. Very friendly crew here and they are dog-friendly, allowing dogs into the tasting room! Their strength is their zinfandels, but be sure to try the dessert wines also. Everything is reasonably priced and the staff are very helpful.

At this point you should be pretty hungry and need food to keep going. Downtown Alameda has a plethora of restaurants, but for some reason we always end up at La Pinata 3. A local chain, but I can't say the food is the greatest. However, it is cheap and the margaritas are huge and pretty potent.


-- Happy Travels!