San Francisco Overnight (lots of photos!)

Saturday 5/28-Sunday 5/29: Amtrak, Art, Oysters

Mr. E and I took the train from Sac to San Francisco on Saturday morning for a quick overnight visit as part of our Memorial Day long weekend. We stayed again at Le Meridien hotel in the Financial District, which we had discovered during our most recent visit and which may now be our new favorite given its reasonable prices and spacious City By the Bay Suite that provides us with separate space and a snug little balcony with a great view. Our room wasn't ready when we arrived, so we grabbed lunch at the nearby Subway before summoning a Lyft to head out for the afternoon.

Our primary destination and reason for the weekend visit was to see the Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy exhibition at the Legion of Honor. The amazing creations were intermingled on the first floor amongst the galleries, providing access to all museum visitors, and then a ticketed/timed part of the exhibition featured a retrospective of the fashion designer's work on the lower level. Incredible!!! My favorites were a blue and white dress (first photo) and the Architecture collection (second two photos).

I was also pleased to see that the Porcelain Gallery on the lower level was open, unlike during our previous visit. This time, I could admire some of my favorite decorative art and view the special exhibit Michelle Erickson: Wild Porcelain, which provided a fascinating juxtaposition of contemporary work inspired by some of the classical pieces.

When we were ready to leave, we hailed another Lyft back to the hotel so that we could check into our room. Mr. E's status with Bonvoy makes us automatically eligible for an upgrade, and we were quite surprised to walk into a huge suite on the 18th floor. Unfortunately, the suite was a completely open space, and we need the separate bedroom, so we had to go back to the front desk to request a "downgrade" to our original room type. I'm guessing that doesn't happen very often!!!

We had just enough time to drop off our bags in the new room before walking to E&O Kitchen near Union Square for our 5:30pm reservations, which gave us 30 minutes to order off of the Happy Hour menu. A dozen oysters, please! Also salt & pepper calamari to share and some steamed pork buns for Mr. E. We each enjoyed a couple of Happy Hour beverages, and I ordered the wood-fired edamame from the regular menu -- very tasty and a huge portion size! I figured I'd likely want something else later in the evening, so we ordered the Prosperity Toss salad to go (that item is known as the "Baby, I was Tossed This Way" salad at the moment in honor or Pride month -- how cool!!!).

Mr. E suggested we stroll through Chinatown on our way back to the hotel, and I realized the genius of his idea when I saw the first cluster of Lucky Cats at a souvenir store. We procured just two new waving cats plus a hanging Lunar New Year cat to add to our collection, but we also made a note of the huge store with lots of other desirable items that unfortunately was closing just as we discovered it. That spot will definitely be a priority destination for our next visit!

On Sunday morning, Mr. E got coffee from the Starbucks across the street from the hotel and then met me in the Park Grill hotel restaurant for breakfast. One of the reasons I like this particular hotel is that it seems to attract francophones, so I get to hear French being spoken at neighboring tables during breakfast! We walked back to the Salesforce plaza to catch our Amtrak bus connection for the trip home. The larger of the two new Lucky Cats (7.5" tall from base to ear tip) perched on the seat next to me for the ride...