If you come to San Francisco...

Scott McKenzie wrote the famous hippie song that included the line: "If you come to San Francisco, Summertime will be a love-in there." Not sure what that means, probably some goofy hippie free-love stuff, but he clearly did not mean there would be much in the way of weather related warmth. It was cold. We rolled in early Friday morning (Kudos to Matt Fresh for his 4 am drive to LAX), and got a nice pickup at the airport by Joe Jarvis. We headed to the San Fran Marriott, which is a pretty cool building. After breakfast we decided to hit the town, however, since the fog was so thick and the air so brisk, we decided to hit the town indoor style. On to the world's worst use of weapon related profits.

Most of us were happy to see capitalist Tony Stark use his weapon related fortune for things like fast cars, getting chicks and creating super computers named Jarvis (I'm a huge fan of anything great named Jarvis). We visited what might be the opposite of Superhero Ironman: The Winchester Mystery House. What would you do if in 1866 you inherited $20 million big ones? Would you buy a gold carriage? Have dinner with President Grant? Take the greatest president-to-be on a safari? Well Sarah Winchester, inheriter of some $20 million in 1866, decided that her money would best be put to use building a crazy house, in an effort to keep the evil spirits confused/appeased. She inherited the money of her late husband, William Winchester, of the Winchester Rifle Company. Staircases to no-where, doors that open to walls, doors to the outside from the second story (a one story drop), and a huge collection of Tiffany glass. Tiffany glass is expensive stuff, but very pretty. Too bad Sarah decided to put the most expensive piece of her collection, a priceless window indoors, so no sunlight will ever hit it:

Here is some unused glass:

And the door to no-where:

This is what happens when you have a lot of money, a lot of time, a guilty conscience and listen to the "Boston Medium"( a psychic).

After that, we ventured back to downtown San Fran for some good eats: The Boudin Bakery. There are many reasons to go to San Fran, and Boudin has to be high on the list (except if you are allergic to wheat, then I would avoid this place and change the adjectives "delicious" and "yummy" to "not-so-good" and "slightly-better-than-garbage"). We ate at the restaurant at the pier, check out this before and after of Joe Jarvis and his Cioppino:

Before:



And after (that crab really took a beating, at one point crab shell hit various people at the table):




Diane and I enjoyed a Sourdough Pizza and a Crab Cake Sandwhich, while Annette and Margeret had the amazing bread bowl soup.