Location: Orchard Garden Hotel, San Francisco 

Apparently this place has won all sorts of green awards – can’t quite see why, but maybe that’s the point? Anyhoo, china town gate is literally 20m away and we’re just two blocks from union square so we really are in the heart of it – great pick Joelle! Did I mention the exceedingly comfy robes? Free DVD rentals? And of course free wifi. Heaven…

To the complete surprise of no one in particular, much shopping has already been achieved – first priority, body and face products. Origins, Dr Kiehls, Evada, Bed&Body Works, Bare Essentials, Sephora and a necessary Walgreens trip for my chilli-enabling tablets. Many shopping bags later and a hefty hit on my credit card and I am stocked up with nice smelling, skin enhancing goodness -yay for me. Combine the fact that things are way cheap over here (eg foundation $70 at home, $28 here) and the almost parity of the dollar, I consider the entire day a bargain 🙂

We’ve also explored the range of eating experiences.  We started with a tasteless but essential (for the true USA trip) junk food lunch at Carls Jr. Saturday night was a magnificent Chinese meal at the recommended R&G Cafe – with a serve of Peking duck with buns (think steamed pork bun) and wild mushroom chow mien. The chow mien in particular was absolutely scrummy.  Today we started with brunch at the French place across the road – Cafe de la Presse.  A true find in a very handy location, the food was quite delicious and we’ve already decided we’ll return at least once. I had poached eggs with a red wine and mushroom sauce – unusual sounding but a wonderful rich, rounded flavour – accompanied by lovely crunchy squares of potato. Joelle had eggs benedict, with perfectly poached eggs and lashings of salmon and hollandaise, accompanied by both the potato squares and fruit. This afternoon we continued our Fairmont tour, catching the cable car up Nobb Hill for a high tea.  The venue was lush – all marble columns, sweeping staircases and crisp white linen.  Starting with a glass of Louis Bouillot Burgundy, we soon settled in with an appropriate feeling of luxury.  A three tiered display included mini sandwiches such as five spice tenderloin and lady apple slaw on black olive baguette;, scones with lemon curd, pear and quince compote, jams and cream; and a variety of little sweets. Overall the experience was very pleasant with good service, attractive surrounds and tasty morsels, but the scones left a bit to be desired – dense not fluffy, powdery not creamy. And the amount of cream was too low, requiring a request for additional supplies.. 

Well that was a good 24 hours.  Next up dinner. And tomorrow our drive up the coast begins – after a little shopping of course!