Practical travel information for practical travelers
Last year around this time I published my bucket list – a stream of conscious list of things I wanted to do, places to go, and things to see. I knew it was pretty ambitious; it was meant to be. Instead of having all these ideas rolling around in my head, I wanted to put [...]
Channel your inner Al Capone or “Machine Gun” Kelly with a visit to Alcatraz Island on your next stay in San Francisco. Located in the San Francisco Bay, about a mile offshore, the island served as a lighthouse and military site before becoming a Federal prison in 1963. Alcatraz operated as a federal penitentiary for [...]
I’ll be in San Francisco for nearly a week, the first time that I’ve spent that long in this city for many years. For far too long, San Francisco has been a pass through city for me, somewhere I’ve stayed while en route to somewhere else, or somewhere for a quick little stop over. [...]
In the middle of San Francisco’s Walter S. Johnson Park, sits the Palace of Fine Arts, an easily recognizable piece of San Francisco architecture. You’ve likely seen it in many photographs, with attractive shots both by day and by night. The Palace was designed as part of the 1915, Panama Pacific Exposition, an event hosted [...]
Many cities with large Chinese and Chinese-American communities have fortune cookie factories, and many provide tours. If you are in San Francisco’s Chinatown, you can find a fortune cookie factory tour at the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory, in an alley historically known for its brothels and gambling. You can smell the fortune cookies being [...]
A guest post for today, Black Friday, as I take a long weekend off to enjoy time with family and friends. With these great ideas to get you thinking, there’s no reasons not to get away from San Francisco for a fun day trip. —- San Francisco is a wonderful place to visit not only [...]
Long the classic date, dinner and a movie usually requires delicate timing. And early dinner and a late movie? Or an early movie and a late dinner? With both choices fraught with potential for timing disasters and arguments, why not do both at the same time — at San Francisco’s Foreign Cinema. Movies, which start [...]
For one block, San Francisco’s Lombard Street is the crookedest street in the world. You may have seen that one block in photographs, movies, or on television, but the full length of the street is much more than just that one block. The street runs east and west, and starts at The Presidio, runs through [...]
I enjoy museums, and try to get to one on a fairly frequent basis. Art, history, science, culture — it all has appeal to me. The the thirst for knowledge, information, or just seeing and experiencing something new is always a good time for me. And then there are other kinds of museums. The quirky [...]
Do you scratch your head and wonder how they schedule routine highway and bridge repairs? I assumed that it would be a pro-active process, with planning and timing designed to work around any peak travel times. Clearly any major repairs are going to involve disruption, but I would think that the powers that be would [...]
In addition to traveling, Mary Jo likes lingering over a cup of coffee, wandering in a museum, sipping wine at a cafe, enjoying a relaxing massage, and sharing it all with friends and readers.
Her most recent travels were to Portugal and Italy.
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