Don't Eat at Barbara's

On Sunday Plot and Duck went on a really bad hike that wasn't a hike, it was a historical tour, but it wasn't even that. The little blurb in the Chron had said if we'd meet at 1:30, at the old train station in El Granada, there would be a lady from the El Granada Historical Something Or Other who would show us the fine old homes and other wonders of historical El Granada, down the road from Pacifica.

Blogmaid, you know this already, but we didn't: there is no old train station in El Granada. There is a restaurant, Taste of Yummy, on a corner of the highway, into whose parking lot, by blind luck, Plotnik decided to stop his car to try and figure out where the old train station might be. Turns out that restaurant USED TO BE the train station, at the beginning of the TWENTIETH Century, "Did they call it 'the old train station' in the ad again?" the woman said. Everyone laughed ho ho yuk yuk you freaking yokels.

Then, the historical woman made everyone stand in one spot while she traded insider jokes with the guy from the Historical Society of Redwood City and the guy from the Historical Society of Montara. Motorcycles roared by. You couldn't hear a word anyone was saying, though the three Historical People laughed heartily. Then they would walk us for five minutes and stop in front of a dumpster or old, sort of, parklet, in a way, kind of.

Trust The Great Plotnik, there is nothing to see in El Granada. Plotnik and Ducknik bailed after three quarters of an hour, each quarter worth less than the previous one.

The tour walked one way, Plot and Duck walked the other, heading for Barbara's Fish Trap, where a man on the tour said they "make the best clam chowder in the world." There was a line out the door at Barbara's, and you had to put your name on a list. "Best clam chowder in the world," said another guy in line. Plot put their name on a list and he and Duck walked down by Princeton Harbor, looking at the...at the...well, at nothing. There is nothing at all to look at down there, but there was this one bench by the water. So they sat on the bench by the water. This red sailboat sailed by that building in the background that looks like a cannery from the Popeye movie. Plottie took a picture. The boat moved. Somewhere, a clam burped.

Then they got up, went back to Barbara's Fish Trap. The chowder probably would be delicious to someone from El Granada or Princeton Harbor, but not to anyone who has actually ever tasted real clam chowder before. It was the kind you drop those little round crackers into and the crackers sit on the top of the soup and you can't push 'em under because they just pop back up, gasping for breath. "Please," they beg, "eat us. Don't make us go back in there."

Boring tour, mediocre soup. Pretty sailboat though. Maybe they'll finish that tunnel while any of us are still alive.