Hey catwood. You'll have a a great visit! In S.F., do the touristy things... Fisheman's Wharf, Ghirardelli Square, a cable car, Alcatraz, etc. I agree that spending some time in Berkeley is nice... if you have a car, you can meander through Marin County too.

Speaking of a car, Napa is fun, but would be much better with wheels. Believe it or not, the huge Mondavi "Welcome Center" has the best tour in the Valley... informative, educational, welcoming. Most other places you just stand in a prefab room, sipping tiny pours of wine. And don't buy any wine in Napa, unless you find a small-run bottle they only sell on site. Most of what you'll taste is available cheaper where you live.

The restaurant everyone told me to visit the first time I went to S.F. (years ago) was Cha Cha Cha in the Haight. It was partly for the food and mostly for the décor. Now there's another, much blander location in the Mission that I've also been to (and, apparently, one in L.A.) but don't be fooled by cheap imitations. Wait 2 hours for your table on Friday night in the Haight like the rest of us.

There are a ton of great hole-in-the-wall restaurants in S.F., but most of the nice fancy restaurants are in hotels -- often, glorious, grand old hotels. A fun evening is going from top-floor bar to top-floor bar in downtown hotels, drinking and ordering appetizers. It's do-it-yourself tapas!

Besides eating, there's a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building on a side street that runs into Union Square... it was a study for the Guggenheim, so it's fun to visit. The building housed a jewelry store last time I was there. The Columbarium is an interesting place to visit too -- there are no cemeteries in San Francisco, and just this one place to inter a loved one's ashes. Some of the little niches for the urns are decorated to a fare-thee-well.

Happy trails!
David

PS: I love that no one here (including me) knows anything about the clubs in San Francisco. Who says gay people are monolithic?

[Edited to fix spelling of "Ghirardelli"]

[This message has been edited by IndyDavid (edited 09-18-2002).]