The Lake Tahoe townhouse we lease for the ski season in Truckee, Calif., is fantastic, but compared to the six-bedroom lakeside manse we stayed in last weekend for Seb’s work ski trip, it’s just a cozy cabin. This extravagant three-story home in Incline Village (on the Nevada side of the north shore) boasted a serious Lake Tahoe view. It was hard to tear myself away.
One of my favorite places to get breakfast in San Francisco is the Ferry Building Saturday morning farmer’s market, where farmers and food companies sell amazing food at stalls all along the Ferry Building plaza on the Embarcadero. The best of the best in my opinion are the chilaquiles at Primavera’s stall. Eating tortilla chips piled with scrambled eggs, sour cream, avocado, onion, refried beans and queso cotija while watching boats cruise under the Bay Bridge is the perfect start to a San Francisco weekend.
I love it when friends come to visit because it means we have an excuse to get out of our neighborhood and splurge on some of the best stuff in San Francisco. Our friends Alex and Erin came over from Perth on Friday morning, bringing beautiful, warm, sunny weather with them, so we headed straight across the bay to have lunch at Fish., the perpetually busy lunch hotspot in Sausalito. One meal of fish and chips, fried oysters, ceviche, and tuna salad sandwiches later, and we were on our way back to San Francisco, stopping off at Cavallo Point. Cavallo Point is a place I’ve heard a lot about lately, and it does not disappoint. The red-roofed buildings of Fort Baker are now part of a luxury resort that includes the Cavallo Point Lodge, the Michelin-starred restaurant Murray Circle and Farley Bar, all at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County. It felt like summertime as we sat in rocking chairs on the front porch, sipped our pints of Sierra Nevada and enjoyed the view of the bridge and the bay.
Disc golf in Golden Gate Park followed by coffee and cupcakes in Hayes Valley (at La Boulange and Miette, respectively) rounded out our leisurely day of San Fran fun. As an added bonus, while wandering down Hayes Street, we walked by the filming of a new Steven Soderbergh movie called Contagion, starring Jude Law, Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet and Marion Cotillard. We had no celeb sightings in Hayes Valley, sadly, but the downtown next morning I accidentally walked onto the movie set (it was a fake drug store—I thought it was real) and saw Jude Law getting his makeup done in his trailer. Saw him right through his open window. 
Cavallo Point, photos courtesy cavallopoint.com (top and bottom left); the disc golf course in Golden Gate Park (bottom right).
Last week, we had a night out on the town at Biscuits and Blues, a retro blues club/dinner theater near Union Square that serves up a side of blues music with its Southern cuisine. The basement venue is dark and cozy, with big booths lining the walls where I expected to see 50s-era men in white jackets sitting with girls in poodle skirts. The food is not to-die-for, but it’s good enough if you stick with the Southern classics (the best choices are the fried chicken and the pulled pork), and the music is great. All in all, it’s a fun night out in downtown San Francisco, and it’s the closest thing we’ve found so far to the beloved jazz cellar in Perth. 
Photo courtesy Biscuits and Blues.
