The Final Adventure in Which I Get The River Water Sickness

The end is very f*$%ing nigh and if you know what movie that is from, you are amazing. Because it's not even spoken, it's graffittied on a wall. And unless you're British, you probably aren't even totally sure what nigh means.

The Adventures of Citygirl/Farmhand and Tim

Part Five

Saturday, August 14, 2010

For our last full day of vacation, we decided to swank things up a bit and get a room at the W in San Francisco. It's in Soma, next door to the SFMoma, try saying that 4 times fast. And yes, while we would have preferred to stay somewhere a little less tragically 90's era hip, the St. Regis was overbooked and would have depleted almost all of our Starwood points. Plus, the SF W is surprisingly nice and the dated hipness actually seems to work for some reason. I mean, I truly got a kick out of the LED Buddha next to the TV.

And the views were pretty incredible, both during the day and at night.

Miraculously, we even had a sunny day! People were out in throngs to celebrate. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start from the beginning...

We woke up early at the Holiday Inn Express in Monterey in order to hit the free breakfast buffet in the lobby. Boy was that special. Lots of posturing old dudes in Ferrari jackets and Pumas. A lot of them were even wearing their car rally badges just to prove that they had officially paid the entrance fee. We ate our boxed cereal and hardboiled eggs and hit the Starbucks across the street for some real coffee because the H.I. Express coffee tasted like hot water with some coffee bean scented Yankee candles melted into it. It was at the 'bucks that I was suddenly hit by a wave of stomach pain, followed by a very awful gurgling sound. And so began the 3 day Dirty River Water sickness. I will spare you the gruesome details but let's just say it was coming at me from both ends and leave it at that.

As you can imagine, I was slightly terrified to go anywhere that didn't have a private bathroom less than 10 feet away, so the thought of getting on a motorcycle for a few hours was really really terrifying. But because spending the last day in a gloomy hotel room with views of a parking lot and fog was just not an option, I hopped on that bike like a champion and away we went.

The ride wasn't as nauseating as I expected and was actually quite fun. Until we stopped and all the stomach gurgling started again. But I pushed myself through it and we walked down to this private little beach along the coast that was absolutely beautiful and desolate. We climbed around the big rocks until the tide started to come in, then ran back to the main shore and got back on the bike. Next stop: San Francisco! (Minus the detour we took at Tim's favorite burrito spot along the side of the road which I unfortunately couldn't enjoy and just watched while Tim ate an entire giant burrito that must have had 10,000 calories in it. Even he knew it was a mistake, but he just couldn't resist.)

We rode into SF and it was sunny! Unheard of. We did a sunny little bike tour before checking into the W. Once we got our room and got settled, I needed a little time out to deal with my stomach issues and was hoping and praying that I would be hungry for dinner because San Francisco food is so damn good. Tim bought me a bottle of Pepto and I took a nap for a little bit.

When I woke up, I was still a little woozy but I knew that I had to push myself to eat some dinner and figured that if I were inebriated, I would not be able to feel my stomach pain. So we got some old fashioned cocktails at a speakeasy called Rickhouse in the Financial District and don't you know it? My plan worked. With enough gin in my gut to kill a small child, I barely noticed the nauseau and it was off to dinner! We had a great meal at this spot called 54 Mint that boasts authentic Italian food. I enhanced my meal and suppressed my gut pains with a great Tuscan Nero AND a Kir Imperiale. Again, it worked. Tim and I shared the gnocchi with meat ragu and pesto trenette. Both were amazing. I was kind of partial to the pesto but a good gnocchi that melts in your mouth is always hard to deny. Yummers. This despite the fact that my stomach was in turmoil means the food was probably even better than I realized. (I also ate a few hunks of fresh parmesan cheese as an app to bind myself up. Just an fyi. Possibly a tmi fyi.)

Earlier that night, we said we were gonna get crazy with it and go to some clubs after dinner, maybe even visit one of our old rave-era haunts like 111 Minna but you know what? We didn't. We just went back to our hotel, admired the gorgeous Bay Bridge views again, then went to sleep.

The Adventures of Citygirl/Farmhand and Tim

Part Five

Sunday, August 15, 2010

This is the end, my friends, the end.

The next morning, we woke up happy that we didn't pull an all-night rager and went to the SF Moma where they had a show called "From Calder to Warhol." It was a nice sampling of art that we both like. Mostly. The piece that inspired us the most was this crazy little video art piece- which is surprising because we both hate most video art- but it was this genius and highly entertaining piece by William Kentridge assembled to The Magic Flute and called The Black Box (you can watch some of it on YouTube, although you need some patience which obviously works better in a museum: The Black Box). We spent almost 30 minutes watching it, completely transfixed by the imagination and excruciating detail.

I bought Tim a book called Prefab Houses in the SFMoma bookstore which has some inspiring ideas for the farm. The farm! We were both missing it so much!

Last stop before departure: Oakland. We had our last meal in the Bay Area along the docks in Oaktown with our motorcycle lender, Craig, and his wife. It was super chill and fun but before we knew it, it was time to get to the airport for our Red Eye.

And now we are back. Refreshed and excited about life all over again. Put your work gloves back on, kiddo.