vacation update

No good can come of drunken blogging, which is why I didn't blog all weekend (unlike some people). Fantastic things can come from drunkeness though. What the party on saturday lacked in size it made up for in enthusiasm and good company, not to mention singing robots. all in all it was a fantastic weekend of drinking, deformed animals and shopping.

during the bevmo grand opening I bought a bottle of cran-raspberry vodka. Mostly i bought it because it came in a metal bottle that looks like some kind of hair product. I drank it on saturday, but by monday I found the perfect cocktail for it, cran-raspberry vodka, 7-up, lime. and you have to drink it with a pink elephant cocktail swizzler, and i'm sure it's better in a coffee mug that has a picture of you on it.

sunday was a bit of a wet day in the city, and it ended with me purchasing nothing but food. I was very disappointed in myself. although monday's shopping trip resulted in some rather adorable pink shoes, utterly incomparable to lydia's xena shoes though. I spent more money in berkeley on tues than my 2 days of sf shopping. it seems to be a rather non-peak shopping season.

as for food and drink:
sunday was Oakland's famous Luka's, where I ordered a beer involving woodruff syrup. I still don't know what a woodruff is, i looked it up for a few seconds, it seems to be rather similar to a weed, or weedy wildflower. I know I prefer wheat beers, and I know most things involving syrup can't go wrong. And I was pleasantly pleased when a giant goblet of green sparkling liquid arrived at the table. It was good, tasted like a sweet sparkling wine. It however, did not taste a thing like beer. my mac and cheese bubbling hot and tasty even if the mushrooms were a bit hard. I probably shouldn't have eaten so many fries. but the leftovers made a lovely breakfast.

Monday was the tonga room, at the fairmont hotel. this was a plan left over from december, when drinking wasn't really in my cards. I knew this hotel was 6 blocks up from union square, but what I didn't realize was that it was practically straight up. if the incline was any larger i would have needed mountain scaling gear. next time, my trek up the hill will involve some kind of vehicle designed for transporting people. finally we made it, somehow, after me complaining for like 5 blocks about how old i am. we're greeted with a pretty generic, albeit nice, hotel. and we do down some corridors, pass a grand ballroom or two, and make it to the tonga room, which is fantastically dedicated to its theme. step inside and instantly the sterility of the hotel corridors are washed away and you're in a dark, tiki haven. the $7 buffet of appetizers and really awful fruit was decent, and the $6.50 happy hour tiki cocktails packed a bit of a punch (although i was probably still recovering from walking up the hill) My drink involving rum, vodka and some kind of juice was much better than Lydia's lava bowl, which was disappointing not only in taste (taste's like lava I guess) but in apparance. Luckily the bar and buffet were decked out in paper umbrellas and such. there was a pond, and a rain show every 20 mins or so. And there were tons of grassy roof things. I don't really know what they were, but they looked like large muppets. I was glad I went.

Lunch on tuesday was at the adagia restaurant (conveniently located a few steps from kroeber fountain (is that what it's called?) across from cafe strada). This restaurant had far too many waiters, it was a bit ridiculous, especially considering the service wasn't that good. I wish it had existed when I lived in berkeley. The food was good and the prices were decent. the room was filled with older people, professor types, etc. Lydia and I ate some complicated things, something like risotto with asparagus and meyers lemon. and rigatoni with chicken, mushrooms, pesto, and something else green. Not that I use much salt, but the communal salt bowls that involve strangers putting their fingers in and taking some seemed a bit gross.

Raphael's on center was tuesday's going away happy hour. Suspicious as I was of a vegetarian restaruant, it worked out best for us to dine and drink next to BART. If i knew from that start that $3.50 cocktails were involved, I wouldn't have doubted at all. so, $3.50 cocktails were involved. Not random well drinks, but fancy things in martini glasses. the raspberry mojito (served in a martini glass) was tasty, but a bit too murky for my taste with all the mint leaf bits, raspberry seeds, and other puree floating around in the alcohol. my second coctails was rather smoother. vodka, limoncello and (possibly raspberry) sorbet. and boy was it pink, but not quite as pink as the cosmo, which was like day-glo pink. i don't know how it got that color. the food, or at least the appetizers were a bit too froufrou for me, most of the things that sounded interesting tended to involve one major ingredient that i didn't like. I didn't get a chance to see the dinner menu, but i imagine, since they don't use meat they make up for it by the froufrouness. my caeser salad was surprisingly tasty considering a few hours earlier i had dismissed the salad as a big plateful of lettuce. and my bruchetta was exactly how bruchetta is, bread with tomatos on top. this was the closest thing they had to the sandwich i was craving for some reason. blakes may be better with the fried food, but the next time i'm in berkeley and want to drink on an empty stomach betwen the hours of 3-6, raphaels is where i'll be.

so, being a bit happy, the trip to the airport was much more pleasant. the flight was on time. and I was off the plane one minute early. And now back to real life where I don't drink, mostly, at all.