Ah Vegas! The city of conspicuous consumption of all things – water, neon, and of course money… A city where you can watch, astonished, as a man playing blackjack casually loses twenty chips to the dealer over a 90 second period. Then you realise each one is worth $1000. Still, we managed to tear ourselves away […]
You may or may not know that California law means drinking under 21 is illegal, and many bars, well, bar young people. Particularly annoying for us, with two teens in tow – esp one who is nearly 19 – we were usually on the look out for inclusive bars and taphouses. But often a nearby […]
There are many many breweries and fabulous bars in Los Angeles, and LA itself is absolutely massive. We decided to just be opportunistic and go to bars near to where we would be anyway, to try to maximise our time and not pretend we’d get everywhere we planned to go. Hence we ended up in […]
Cajoled by everyone else in to visiting Universal Studios, I had assumed this would be a ‘no beer blog’ kinda day. But I was wrong (unusual, I know – mark the date in your diaries folks…) For a start, I had reckoned without The Simpsons and the fabulously infamous Duff beer served For Real in […]
Leaving SF we drove down to Monterey; we had hoped to stop in Santa Cruz at Discretion Brewing but time wasn’t on our side as we wanted to make it to the famous aquarium in good time. Having coo-ed over the sea otters and seals in the harbour it was time to coo over some […]
We spent the morning at Alcatraz, with a quick stop at the USS Pampanito submarine, then wandered up to Lombard Street to marvel at the crazy zig zag hill. Walking from there to City Lights bookstore, we stopped to pay our respects to the burned down shell of Rogue’s SF outpost and cursed the arsonists. […]
The Mikkeller bar has one of those traditional horseshoe shaped bars we all know and love from Cheers, but we didn’t get to sit at it instead taking a shared table with waiter service (such a good idea for any bar I always think). Mikkeller mainly serve their own brews but they use around a […]
Almanac Beer Co‘s San Francisco tap room is a must-do when in SF. We’ve long loved their barrel-aged beers in bottles and on draught at our local bar, Beer Gonzo, so to be actually setting foot in Almanac’s bar was a bit of a dream. It’s not their actual brewing premises, those are in Alameda […]
After satiating our cultural needs by dragging the kids to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to see some classic pop art and work by Sargent Johnson, as well as Sublime Seas a contemporary film on migration and the sea by British artist John Akomfrah, a beautiful walkthrough light bulb installation, and thought-provoking photography […]
With a flight delay of just a few minutes under three hours (can’t help thinking that the fact cash compensation kicks in at the 3hr mark sped things along eventually…) we arrived in California a little bit bedraggled after 17 hours in transit. Flight was great, watched 3 films (Ghost Stories: disappointing despite Jeremy Dyson’s […]