Actually, sorry, now that I think about it, maybe the guide to the Haight Ashbury tour didn't say all that.

Might have been the tour guide/driver for the Wine Country Coach tour. Or could have been the guide to the Financial District walking tour.

Someone said it!

Ah faulty memory again. "Foul Play" and "High Anxiety" were fused in my consciousness. :)

<i>I think the guide to the Haight Ashbury tour said that the Hyatt Regency (and the elevators) appeared in the movie "Towering Inferno." Supposedly they doubled up a 50+ storey SF building (sorry, I can't recall which one, but I'm sure someone here knows) to create that towering inferno.</i>

Nope. The towering inferno in "Towering Inferno" was the 52-story Bank of America building on California Street. I know that because 1) I watched them filming it; and 2) the fire station in the movie was the fire station I lived next door to at the time, also on California Street (5 blocks west of Van Ness Avenue).

You certainly covered a lot of ground in a brief time, but still I'm a little disappointed in you. Wouldn't you typically have hit Seattle, SF and L.A. in this 4.5 days?

While not as pretty as the Garden Court, it's nice to have a drink at the Pied Piper in the Palace. Dark and clubby. Also the Latin American Club on 22nd Street--enormous margaritas (rocks only).

Well, I'm unemployed right now, so I've slowed down. :)

Plus I was hit with this mystery ailment when I was in SF. My left foot was in pain most of the time. I don't know why. Maybe it was because I had to wear some ill-fitting leather shoes at first. I promptly switched to sandals for the rest of the trip, and I just couldn't walk very well.

Given my (lack of) driving skills, throwing LA into the mix would have been challenging. My flight from SFO was cancelled and I got routed through LAX -- so that counts, right? :)

I'm going to find something interesting to do for the evening. It's Friday night. I shouldn't be checking Fodor's. :)

Hi, 111op! Just returned from a quickie trip to LA and ran across this thread! What a terrific report!

You got to see so much within such a short period of time! Very impressive!

It was truly fun for me to drive you around and to show you my most favorite city in the world! I'm just sorry we didn't have time to go out to the Wine Country. That bus tour sounds horrid! Hope it didn't turn you off, but the next time you're out this way, we'll have to do the Wine Country in proper fashion. You missed the best wineries for wine, for history, for view, for everything! Viansa? (Ugh!) - and I'll do the driving, please! [For other Fodorites: I got a bit discombobulated coming out of the Lombard Gate from the Presidio, so I handed the map to 111op and asked him please to guide me to the Golden Gate Park. He promptly turned the map upside - while it's very impressive to be able to read a map upside down and backwards, it didn't really inspire me with a lot of confidence! :) But we got to the De Young Museum just fine!]

You're also providing me with fresh ammo for my next "guided" tour. I never knew that thingamabob was called "Cupid's Span", not being into modern art. Good to learn new things about San Francisco!

Your mention of Hainanese chicken has me salivating! When to go to SE Asia again just for the chicken?! We'll have to just make do with Nonya cooking in New York!

Great report! Thanks so much for sharing your great trip! ((y))

See you soon in NYC!

Hey easy, RW Apple had an article in NYT called "Ten Meals Worth Flying For" (or something like that). He picked fancy restaurants but I think Tian Tian in Singapore deserves a place there (and this is coming from someone who is not really a big fan of what's probably Singapore's national dish).

Unfortunately Nyonya can't compare but we'll have to make do. That *will* have to be my treat!

Hope you had a good trip and thanks for helping make my visit so enjoyable!

And I don't think that people should be in a car with me when I am (a) driving or (b) navigating. Nothing good can come from it. :)

Good morning, 111op!

You know I was just kidding about your driving, right? :)

On Hainanese chicken, everyone must have a favorite place in Singapore. One of my friends used to teach at the U of Singapore and she said that the BEST HC was at the faculty dining room at the U of S'pore. I must say it really was wonderful.

<i>"That *will* have to be my treat!"</i> Oh, goodie! Another Chinese food/bill fight in the making!

BTW, do you have any favorite Chinese restaurants in NYC? maybe I ought to start another thread on this topic?

Hey easy, you may want to start another thread, but here are some Chinese restaurants I've been to:

Grand Sichuan

It's a chain, but I'm not sure if the restaurants are actually related. There's one in Chelsea (around 24th and 9th) and one on the East side (Lex and 33rd or so). There's also one in the E Village on St. Mark's but I don't think that one is as good.

Wu Liang Ye

There are two I know about. There's one near Rockefeller (48th near 5th, something like that) and one on Lex near Grand Central (probably around 38th and Lex).

Szechuan Gourmet

It's near 5th Avenue/Bryant Park, I think on 42nd.

These are all Sichuan restaurants, I guess. For Cantonese, there's Ping's in Chinatown on Mott Street.

People tend to go to Golden Unicorn for dim sum, but it's not as fancy as Yank Sing (but it's also half the price). I don't go too often. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised by it, but I think that the food can be variable. There's also Dim Sum A Go Go, which I like, but some of my friends who are purists dislike it.

I've mentioned Nyonya already, but similar restaurants are the Penang chain. There's one on the Upper West Side, and I think there used to be one in Soho. Penang is more expensive than Nyonya.

Then in the UWS there's Ivy('s?) Cafe on 72nd. If you look at their menu, they claim that they cooked for Jiang Zemin years ago during a state visit at the Waldorf-Astoria. The food isn't fancy at all (at least what they serve in their restaurant).

A few years ago, people were crazy about the xiao long bao at Joe's Shanghai (on Pell Street in Chinatown). I haven't been in a while. I think there's also the related Joe's Ginger.

There are also noodles type places (like the chains Ollie's and Mee that I don't usually go to). There are more authentic ones in Chinatown.

<b>One Last Morning of Walking</b>

I was leaving later that day.

I decided to take another walking tour of the Haight Ashbury, but first I checked out of my hotel and walked west on Geary, a major thoroughfare throught the city, to the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption (1111 Gough Street). This is featured in the Wallpaper City guide, and the photo looked interesting, so I figured that I'd go take a look. There was a service so I didn't walk around, but I did find the architecture quite unique. At the end were side windows with views of San Francisco.

http://www.stmarycathedralsf.org/

I was a little concerned about walking west of my hotel, but it was morning and it was safe. Geary was north of what might be considered problematic areas anyway. Parts were a bit rundown, but I was fine.

After St. Mary's, I walked past Japantown, and then I walked south on Fillmore. Fillmore seems to have undergone some urban renewal. Some buildings looked pretty new. And then I figured that I was pretty close to Alamo Square, so I walked over to take another look.

By this time it was close to the start time of my walking tour, and I was still at least a good 10-15 blocks away. So I took a cab and went to the end of the Haight Street near the start of Golden Gate Park, where Amoeba Records is. Unfortunately the record store isn't yet open, so I walked to the meeting point of my walking tour just about two blocks away on neighboring Page Street.

Website of Haight Tour:
http://www.sfcityguides.org/desc.html?tour=38

It's strange to see this tour described as "somewhat strenuous" as it's not really strenuous at all for someone who is used to a fair amount of walking. I didn't find the tour as interesting as the Cityscapes tour. The tour moved pretty slowly. While I was primarily interested in the Haight's role in the 1960s, the guide spent at least a good 45 minutes describing the history of the neighborhood. We learned that there used to be a few more cable car lines in the city, and one ran in the neighborhood. Even more surprising, there was a water amusement park in the area.

It wasn't until about halfway into the tour when we learned about the tumultuous 1960s. We were standing in the Panhandle, a smallish patch of green in the area, where our guide told us how the Panhandle came to be so small (land squabbles with shrewd developers who encouraged squatters to take over) and then gave us a little history about the 1960s. The culmination of this hippie/free for all/anything goes era could be viewed as the short-lived "Summer of Love" of 1967. Afterwards the scene was declared dead with the "Death of the Hippie" and people moved away.

Our guide mentioned a few names that were not familiar to me. One player was Neal Cassady, who had affairs with the Beats Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and who later also became a figure in the psychedelic movement. Cassady drove the bus "Furthur" and was a member of the "Merry Pranksters" formed by Ken Kesey, who took LSD in Stanford drug experiments and became a proponent of these drugs (he was also author of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"). And the actor Danny Glover actually saw his career develop in this period as part of the "San Francisco Mime Troupe."

We didn't actually walk on Haight Street until the tour was close to an end. Just when we were to turn, I had to leave because of my flight later in the afternoon (which was subsequently cancelled).

We walked past the Urban School, an expensive private school where Robin Williams's son went, and a street where any one of four houses might have been where Joan Mitchell had lived. Our guide said that when he was asked to lead this tour, he was also asked to research where Joan Mitchell might have lived. There were then two candidates. After his research, he decided that she could lived in any one of four houses on that street.

<b>End</b>

Thanks for the report! Gave me lots of ideas for my trip next month.

Thanks for finishing your report. I used to hold office hours in Musical Offering back in my grad school (salad) days. Speaking of which, they had a good smoked trout salad.

Where are you going next?

Hey Leely, so I'll assume that you went to Berkeley, and I'm curious about the field. But if these are questions too personal to answer on a public forum, I understand.

Sadly I haven't made any travel plans. I'm interested in going to Asia again, especially China.

Now that I've a lot of free time, I'm not feeling the urge to rush to Europe and spend every day in a different city. :) But I'd like to go sometime. I'd still like to go to Buenos Aires (a trip I cancelled last fall), but time is working against me because of the reversal of the seasons in the southern hemisphere.

I should make better use of my unemployment time. I've travelled less than I expected, but still I've travelled for a good 9 weeks, which is about 1/3 of six months. So that's not bad.

Question for you about the Westin-

1) Declining "room service" and getting a $5 voucher? What exactly does that mean? Is it having the maid come by to clean the room (ie make the bed; provide fresh towels; empty trash cans)? So when you declined it, basically no one came to clean the room for your duration of stay? How did you even find out about this?

2) Is there an in-room safe? Is it big enough to put in a laptop?

Thanks.

I'm sorry about that typo. Yeah, it wasn't "room service" as in ordering meals. I was referring to the maid/cleaning service.

They hung something on my door about this that I could go green and get the $5 coupon, but I didn't read the fine print until the third or fourth day or so. So I collected two coupons only. Since I was the only one in the room, it really wasn't too bad.

Yes there was a safe and I left my laptop there when I was out. I think I've a 15'' screen.

The ethernet cable and outlet that you may need for the laptop can be found in a silvery metal light that's on the writing desk (lift the top of the base to find them).

Thanks for the info! I don't think we need maid service either since we're not messy people, and getting $20 in vouchers (for 4 nights) would be great!

Sounds great. Plus these are vouchers you can actually use to get something useful (and I think you can actually use them for room service)! You just need to hang something on the door before 2 am every night. Just be on the lookout for it.

I was chatting with a friend visiting from SF about the Dave Eggers store. She told me that there's a superhero store in NYC, so I just looked it up. Surprise, surprise, it's in Park Slope....

http://nymag.com/listings/stores/Brooklyn-Superhero-Co/

She told me that NYC one is actually better. I'll have to remember to check it out.

Postscript on Westin St. Francis...

So I was trying to find my belt today and I couldn't find it. I figured that I might have left it in the hotel, and I called them. To my surprise, they actually do have it. They keep all lost items for 60 days. I told them when I checked out and gave them my name, but I couldn't remember my exact room number (just an approximate one and I got the floor correct), and they were able to track down the belt. There's even an item number associated with it.

I'll call tomorrow to see what the shipping is. They ship via FedEx. It may be cheaper to buy a new one.

Impressive service!

PPS on Westin St. Francis.

I normally don't bother to fill out questionaires that ask about your stay afterwards, but I decided to do this one whose link arrived by e-mail, especially since a reminder just came in a day or two ago.

Q29: Which of the following best describes why you choose to stay at this hotel?

Priceline was not one of the 5 options. :)

And I wrote this:

"I was very pleased with this hotel. The desk agent (I think her name was [], it was the night of []) was very helpful. I had a pleasant meal at Michael Mina. One of their staff members was very helpful and sat me in the main restaurant when the bar was full.

And to top it off I discovered my belt was missing about two weeks after and I called the Lost and Found at the hotel and they have my belt."

2 more questions:

1) Where is the computer terminal w/the printer? It'll be useful for us to check-in and print out our BPs too.

2) Where did you find the fine print info about declining USA Today? I guess it's not the same place where you found out about declining maid service? Are the #s to call to decline each one, or did you go to front desk to tell them?