Out-of-Town Monday: Fisherman's Wharf

Recently I spent the better part of a week in San Francisco and one of the highlights of the trip was a visit to Fisherman's Wharf. My roommate, Catherine Snodgrass, and I took the F Market streetcar from Market Street and discovered Fronnie Lewis, another romance writer from Southern California, on the tram and asked her to join us. It was late afternoon and lots of people were getting off work and boarding the streetcar, which made it very crowded. The locals were friendly and helped us watch out for our stop at Pier 39.

After a quick visit to the Bare Escentuals store for a makeup fix, we decided to pass up Bubba Gump's in favor of the Pier Market Restaurant. (Nothing against Bubba Gump's, but there's one in Anaheim now plus I'd checked out the menus ahead of time and knew they don't offer the Clam Chowder Sourdough Bread Bowl I knew Cathy wanted. Fortunately, the Pier Market did serve the bread bowl and she enjoyed it. My salmon with herb butter was delicious, not to mention being a huge chunk of fish! I couldn't resist washing it down witha glass of Anchor Steam beer, a delicious local brew Fronnie worked her way through a huge helping of crab so everyone was happy with the meal. We had a seat by the window with a great view of San Francisco Bay, some of the resident sea lions and of Forbes Island (pictured at top right), which Frommer's guidebook describes as "a wonderfully ridiculous floating restaurant disguised as an island (complete with lighthouse and real 40-ft. palm trees)". Only in California.

Fisherman's Wharf used to be the commercial fishing district for San Francisco, but is now mainly a tourist mecca. It stretches over a number of wharfs covered with shops and restaurants. Some of the restaurants have been around for decades. There's also a chapel dedicated to the memory of the "lost fishermen" of Northern California at nearby Pier 45.

After dinner, we wandered through Chocolate Heaven, a sinfully irresistible candy shop. Much of the merchandise is from the local Ghirardelli chocolate factory. Fronnie and I found the truffles area and had to sample several of them. The hazelnut truffle was especially delicious, but I love anything with hazelnut flavor. Too bad we didn't have time to hit Ghirardelli Square. On the other hand, given my addiction to chocolate, it's probably just as well.

Here's a slideshow of my Fisherman's Wharf photos, courtesy of Picasa:



Linda

My Town Monday comes to us via Travis Erwin. Thanks, Travis! Click on his site to read his latest post and find links to the other participants.

RWA Conference Report

Last week I attended the RWA National Conference for the first time since 2002. I'm still tired and a little brain dead after catching cold during the week, but I'll try to make some coherent comments.

This year's location was superb: San Francisco, California. I hadn't been to the city in a long time and I'd forgotten how much fun it is. (More about that on Monday.) The conference took place at the San Francisco Marriott, and as always, RWA filled up their room quota and had to book spillover space at another Marriott nearby. My roommate, Catherine Snodgrass, and I were lucky to get a room on the seventh floor. We didn't have much of a view, but the lower floors had their own set of elevators, so we didn't have to waste a lot of time waiting for an elevator. On Wednesday I attended the Historical Romance Writers' Conference and I'll do a separate post about that another time, as it was a good day.

The national conference started on Thursday with an opening session featuring an Australian musician and motivational speaker. I enjoyed her piano playing. I thought she was quite good (I took lessons for years) and I recognized most of the tunes. The last one was a parody of "I Write The Songs" only it was "I Write the Books" and practically the whole audience was singing. This was my least favorite part, and my roomie said later that it smacked of a "revival meeting". Neither of us are RWA true believers any more. We've been stung by RWA's policies one too many times for that.

That afternoon I went to the PAN Retreat to hear Gail Blanke, a self-help writer and life coach. She was very good and I bought her book Between Trapezes. She talked about defining moments and "Six Steps for Thriving On Change" which you can find at her website.

On Friday afternoon, I went to Julia Hunter's Behind the Badge workshop. She's a federal law enforcement officer who writes romantic suspense. I found it interesting and she has a great website http://julia-hunter.com/ with a page of links to all sorts of federal agencies.

Late in the afternoon I participated in the panel on "The Romance of Alternative Lifestyles". We had no idea what to expect, but we had about 40 people show up, only one walked out on us, and most seemed receptive to what we had to say. Walking around with a Speaker ribbon gets attention and lots of people asked me what I was talking about. Some were taken aback when I told them about writing male/male erotic romance, but no one was rude. In general, the atmosphere at this RWA conference was so much more open and accepting than what Cathy and I experienced back in 2002 when there was so much animosity about e-publishing. I'm glad I went back.

This is getting a little long, so I will continue on another day.

Linda

San Francisco, Here I Come!

I leave tomorrow morning for the RWA National Conference in San Francisco and I'll be traveling sans computer, so this will be the only blog post for the week.

It has been a very long time since I've been to the fabled City by the Bay and I'm looking forward to the visit, though I'll have little time to sightsee. Most of the week will be spent at the Marriott attending conference activities. But a friend and I are planning a visit to Fisherman's Wharf for tomorrow night, for shopping and seafood. I should have some of my own pictures to post next week.

My first trip to San Francisco was way back in 1965, two years after my folks and I moved to Southern California. We drove up Highway 101 to the city, stayed in an older hotel and had a ball sightseeing. My dad unwisely agreed to drive down Lombard Street (pictured here), supposedly the crookedest street in the world. We started at the top of the street and drove down in my dad's 1965 Chevelle, a stick shift with no power steering. By the time we got to the end of the street, my dad said his arms felt like they were about to fall off!

My Town Monday: Orange County will return in mid-August. In the meantime, check Travis Erwin's blog for a list of My Town Monday posts.

Linda / Lyndi