Geek Much? Books & Travel

I love almost everything about traveling. I really the only things I can think of that I don’t love about traveling is diarrhea and getting robbed. One thing that I always forget that I love about traveling is all of the reading I do. During my real life I don’t spend my spare time reading books. I couldn’t tell you exactly what it is that I am doing besides reading, but somehow I never get past chapter 3 if I am at home. But when I travel I read avidly. The uninterrupted airplane reading time really gets me into the book. It also helps that when I’m on vacation I don’t spend my extra minutes folding laundry or watching TV, I get the appropriate beverage and seating arrangement (be it a coco batido and a hammock, camping chair and hot chocolate, or a whiskey with a beer back and a bar table) and I read. There are several things about reading on vacation that make it more pleasurable than real life reading for me. For on thing I am anonymous. None of these doctor that I am trying to get letters of recommendation from, or people I keep happening to run into that I went to high school with are around to judge my intelligence by my literature choice. For example on our last trip to Peru I shamelessly read Twilight and giggled through the whole book in various airports along the way, and on the way home I unabashedly asked every bookstore we came across where I could find a copy of Nueva Luna in English. As a side note, I suppose I do care what you think I read so for the record I also read Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout.

Finally, I always think that reading on vacations, even adventure travel vacations, is interesting because EVERYBODY does it! On my last flight to LA the guy I was sitting next to engaged in conversation with the girl across the isle because she was reading the self help book he had just finished. Gag! But also kind of a good way to meet somebody I guess. Along the same lines as spying on people to see what they are reading on the plane, I always love looking at the book exchange shelves in the cheap hostels that I frequent when traveling. I find it fascinating to see what people have thought merited a portion of their limited backpack space.

Not Quite a Thirsty Thursday

Gone (for now) are the college days of Thirsty Thursday where we celebrated the almost weekend with weekend-like partying. Despite the early Friday wake up call, and the expectation that I be fully functioning at work, I crave a little Thursday night break. Sometimes this comes in the form of CSI and an adult beverage, or a trek to the food carts, but this week I am thinking of going to one of the many activities that seems to be popping up now that the weather is clearing and it is beginning to stay light a little bit later.

Do you need something fun to do this Thursday night to take your mind off of work? Do you love cheese? Come to 18 Reasons for the Cowgirl Creamery cheese release party! The Cowgirl Creamery, located in Point Reyes Station, will be releasing their St. Patrick’s Day cheese which is a soft, brie like cheese wrapped in local nettles from 7-9pm.18 Reasons is located at 593 Guerrero (at 18th St.). There is a $5 suggested donation for members and a $10 suggested donation for non members. Click here to learn more.

Cheese not your thing? Are you feeling a little serious? Come to Glide Memorial from 6:30-8:30 for a Slow Food Panel Discussion: How do we close the food gap?

If you are not in the mood for cheese or panel discussions then you must be craving alcohol, dancing and scientific oddities. Check out the Academy of Science Nightlife this Thursday from 6-10pm with featured guest Paxton Gate. The Nightlife is for people 21+ which can be a major plus for this normally kid filled museum. Also tickets are $12 which makes it reasonable for those of us who don’t want to spend the usual $25 to see the place.

Almost Wine Tasting Weekend

This weekend two of my favorite people flew in to town from Portland, Oregon and LA, California with their husband and boyfriend respectively, for a wine tasting weekend. It was a blast!

Unfortunately I had to work on Friday, but Boyfriend had the day off so he was able to take our Portlanders, who arrived a day early, on a fabulous tour of San Francisco. I have to admit, that he gives one of the best city tours of all times. I have lived in the Bay Area my entire life and he still shows me places I have never seen. He is just a true San Franciscan. He grew up here and was taking the bus by himself before he could ride a two wheel bike. He honestly thinks that it is the greatest city in the world, and heaven help you if you try to say otherwise. At least it gives my grandpa and him something to talk about.

For this adventure he kept it simple and stuck to the basic tourist list, Union Square, The Ferry Building, and The Museum of Modern Art.

When I finally got off of work and put my CSA veggies away, my guest (and alcohol) filled weekend began. We first went to Taqueria Cancun, one of our favorite cheap eats just a couple of blocks from the 16th street BART stop. We then tried to continue our evening with class by heading to the rooftop bar at Medjool. We had a lovely and reasonably priced pitcher of sangria while huddled around one of the outdoor heaters taking in the gorgeous views. We then decided to move on to the next venue, so we asked our guests what they wanted to do/drink. The answer: take tequila shots. So we crossed the street to the nearest neon sign and had a shot. We graced that bar with our presence for only as long as the shot took and then continued on our way to the Latin America Club for pint glass margaritas, hold the margarita mix. I like this place a lot despite its lack of seating. There are creepy piñatas hanging all over the ceiling and giant portraits of unusual subjects on all of the walls. It is not too fancy, but also manages to escape the usual sleaze of a dive bar. After an extensive conversation about the best reasons to become morbidly obese and the nuances of exercise pant salesmanship we were off to the next bar. We landed at Skylark with some Juan on Juanes (a corona and a shot of patron for $11) and outdated hip hop. It was a blast. This was the only place we made it to that night that had room for dancing, and the music to dance to. Even Boyfriend tried to bust a move. We finally decided that we should head home, but first we needed to stop at the City Club. The city club is on the corner by the BART station, and in the 1+ years that I have lived nearby I have never seen anybody a) over 5’6 b) overtly female go into this bar. Boyfriend and I always say we are going to stop in, but never make it. Literally we have said this about 5 nights a week since November 2009. Well folks, on Friday night we made it. True to form, boyfriend made friends with everybody in the place and I’m pretty sure he was offered a couple of jobs. We are definitely going to have to go back.

Saturday, in fair form from our previous nights debaucheries, we drove over to Marin to meet up with our LA visitors (my sisters bff since 1st grade) and my cuñado (sisters boyfriend…sometimes Spanish is just a superior language) and after several hours of recovery for both the recently arrived friends and those of us who had gone out the evening before, we headed up to wine country to go to a few wineries before they closed at 4pm. We made it to two. That is really all I can tell you, because I was in no shape to taste wine, or enjoy the food paring, or notice which wineries we were visiting.

After a nap, and some Advil, and strong tea we met back up with everybody at Cavallo Point for drinks and food. This bar is amazing! It has incredible views of the city and the bridge, but is quiet and peaceful. Cavallo Point was built in old military buildings (plus some new ones) as an eco friendly conference center. It has a restaurant, bar, and I believe it also has a cooking school. Green businesses can use the conference rooms for free. One of my favorite things to do with visitors is take them during the afternoon for a French press coffee on the porch. The service can sometimes be questionable, but on Saturday it was exceptional. It closed at midnight, but when we strolled in at 11:30 they sat us right down and served us whatever we wanted. After leisurely drinks (milk with a straw for me please, thanks!) and snacks, we went and sat by the fire pit until we were almost too tired to make it home. I would, however suggest my tip of an afternoon coffee rather than drinks etc. because it is fairly expensive.

On Sunday our friends returned to Portland and the rest of us headed back up to wine country for some more tasting. We went to two more wineries. Acorn is one of my sister’s favorites. They have some fun wines that the other places we have tried don’t grow like sangeovese, and they have vintage vines that were planted in 1890. The little building/tent where the tastings are is snuggled next to a small hill where some of the grapes are grown. There is a little creek that runs next to the dirt road that you drive in on, and abandoned rail tracks throughout. It makes me want to quit my day job and become a wine maker, it also helped that it was one of the first gorgeous, sunny, spring days of the season. The second place we went was the Korbel winery. We tasted several kinds of champagne, and bought a bottle of a fun red champagne along with snacks from the deli. We enjoyed the rest of the sunny afternoon on the porch sipping mimosas (what? you think I go champagne tasting without a kleen kanteen full of orange juice?) and eating olives, salami, and cheese.

The Wine Road barrel tasting event is the ideal way to go wine tasting if you are on a budget. It is $30 per person for the entire 3 day weekend (Fri-Sun) and most places have little food parings to go along with their wine. Just don’t forget to designate a driver!

How Do You Stack Up?

So I admit that I got this list off of facebook, and not even legit off of facebook, but rather I stumbled across it while facebook stalking one of my college GTFs… No matter how I found it, I still found it intriguing. It was captioned at the top “The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?” then you are supposed to count up how many of these books you read.

I thought that it was a fairly inclusive list. What do you think? What books that everybody should read are missing? How many of these have you read?

1. Pride and Prejudice
2. The Lord of the Rings
3. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations Charles Dickens
11. Little Women Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles Thomas Hardy
13. Catch Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
26. Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky
27. Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
28. Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
29. The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame
30. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
31. David Copperfield Charles Dickens
32. Chronicles of Narnia CS Lewis
33. Emma Jane Austen
34. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe CS Lewis
35. The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini
36. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Louis De Bernieres
37. Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden
38. Winnie the Pooh AA Milne
39. Animal Farm George Orwell
40. The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown
41. One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
42. A Prayer for Owen Meaney John Irving
43. The Woman in White Wilkie Collins
44. Anne of Green Gables LM Montgomery
45. Far From The Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy
46. The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood
47. Lord of the Flies William Golding
48. Atonement Ian McEwan
49. Life of Pi Yann Martel
50. Dune Frank Herbert
51. Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons
52. Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen
53. A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth
54. The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon
55. A Tale Of Two Cities Charles Dickens
56. Brave New World Aldous Huxley
57. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Mark Haddon
58. Love In The Time Of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez
59. Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck
60. Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
61. The Secret History Donna Tartt
62. The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold
63. Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
64. On The Road Jack Kerouac
65. Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy
66. Bridget Jones’s Diary Helen Fielding
67. Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie
68. Moby Dick Herman Melville
69. Oliver Twist Charlest Dickens
70. Dracula Bram Stoker
71. The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett
72. Notes From A Small Island Bill Bryson
73. Ulysses James Joyce
74. The Inferno – Dante
75. Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransome
76. Germinal Emile Zola
77. Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray
78. Possession AS Byatt
79. A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens
80. Cloud Atlas David Mitchell
81. The Color Purple Alice Walker
82. The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro
83. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
84. A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry
85. Charlotte’s Web EB White
86. The Five People You Meet In Heaven Mitch Albom
87. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
88. The Faraway Tree Collection Enid Blyton
89. Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
90. The Little Prince Antoine De SaintExupery
91. The Wasp Factory Iain Banks
92. Watership Down Richard Adams
93. A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
94. A Town Like Alice Nevil Shute
95. The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas
96. Hamlet William Shakespeare
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
98. Les Miserables Victor Hugo