A Day in SP, and Rediscovering Maurice.

Today is Plotnik's nephew Nefnik's last day in SF. Slowly, over time and using different friends and family as guinea pigs, Plot and Duck have been working out a really nice day trip in-and-out-of the city. The first stop is usually the top of Twin Peaks, if things are clear (and warm, like yesterday), followed by a jaunt through the Haight into GGP and a stop at the amazing Conservatory of Flowers, where you can see hundreds of jaw-dropping specimens like this Bat Flower.



Then, after lunch, it's across the GGB (stop at Presidio Pet Cemetery an option) and up into the Marin Headlands, where yesterday the fog was chewing up and digesting the Golden Gate Bridge.



Then a hike out to the Point Bonita Lighthouse (next time, Plotnik, check the Open and Closed schedule). Along the path you can spot and hike down to rocks swarming with snoring and belching sea lions. (Look below Vashnik in photo).



Seeing all the poison oak on the ground, AFTER everyone had hiked down to see the sea lions, curtailed the rest of the trip, to get home and take soapy showers. It seems to have worked -- nobody's scratching his or her life away this morning.

In other news, The Great PD has rediscovered Maurice. Maurice Prince, now 87, was the first black graduate of the elite Cordon Bleu. She cooked for General Eisenhower during WW2, or so the story goes, and then continued to cook for celebrities until opening up her own soul food restaurant in LA. When PD and BZ were small, Plot and Duck used to take them to Maurice's Snack 'n Chat for the very best fried chicken and collards and peach pie. Then, sometime after the Plotniks moved to Saint Plotniko, Maurice's closed. And that was that.

Or so we thought. Yesterday, PD phoned to say Maurice has re-opened, on Pico West of Fairfax, but as take-out-only. The reviews Plot has read are not all that complimentary. Hmmm. Don't care. The whole family will go there again if only to smell the grease and look at the amazing celebrity pictures on the wall. The last time Plot was there Lionel Richie was sitting in the front room (of the old restaurant) and the poor man couldn't eat two spoonfulls without someone rushing up to gush over him and watch him swallow. I guess that's how celebrities eat fried chicken.