Tag: travel

Manchester

Going back to Manchester (photos here) after 7 years was a revelation. We landed at Manchester Airport last Wednesday morning after a red-eye Continental flight from JFK. Food was bad even by economy seat standard. Our very stylish hotel is in East Didsbury, which is south of centre Manchester and just as we were getting settle down my mom called me on the cell phone. It turned out she and my dad were already outside Manchester even though I’ve emailed her two weeks beforehand that we were meeting up for lunch on Friday instead of Wednesday! Still, since they were already in the city we changed our plan and took the number 42 bus into Chinatown in the centre.

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Off we go again

After spending only two nights at our apartment since San Fancisco, we are off east again to Manchester, U.K. for a friends’ wedding. More than 9 years ago we shared college apartments for two years, Leah, me, Angela, and Andy. And now I am traveling back to Manchester for the first time since I left after graduation, and after the IRA bombing.

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San Francisco



Cable car

Our week long vacation in San Francisco was pretty relaxing (photo set here). Not having to worry about work or programming-related things are a welcome break. The last time we visited San Francisco was more than 5 years ago and it was the first time Leah and I visited America, so we decided to re-do all the tourist attraction again. This time, we are older and wiser and we spent twice as along in San Francisco to make sure we have enough time to spend in the city. We also take a guided bus tour into the wine country (Napa and Sonoma) for some wine tasting. We visited three wineries which go from small operation (~10,000 bottles/year) to medium size (~100,000 bottles/year), to huge commercial enterprise (>250,000 bottles/year). The first winery makes a big impression on us and I think we are going to order some wines from them over the internet for the upcoming festive season.

We even met up with Nick (a.k.a. Authenticgeek) whom I met over the net over a year ago and is now working at SixApart in SF.

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Surprise of the week

On Tuesday we went to Alcatraz Island for a tour. Leah and I had been there before last time we visited San Francisco more than 5 years ago. So nothing too exciting happened there. The revealation was the Boudin Bread place on the piers. 5 years ago it was a red brick building with very little indoor seatings forcing all the tourists to seat and stand outside to consume the sourdough clam chowder. Now in its place is a very modern metal and glass building with a shop on the left and a demo bakery on the right. There are even outdoor seatings!

The real surprise was when we got back from the island and decided to eat at the Boudin Bistro on the second floor of the new building. Since it is in the tourist location I kind of expected over-priced average food with bored sevices. In fact we got average-priced excellent food with great service! We were so impressed with their food that not only left a large tip, but we also planned to have lunch there on Friday.

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