My family and I decided to spend Christmas Day and the day after in San Francisco to mix it up this holiday season. Lest I ruin family traditions though, I made my way up to Sacramento on Thursday evening to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning at home with the crew. 

Eggnog & Brandy for the win!

In true form, we spent a great deal of time in the evenings playing board games (Sequence is the new go-to and Scattergories is a long time favorite), catching up and eating gingerbread. This weekend was a veritable fat fest for me though I tend to think/hope that calories don’t count between December 23rd and December 26th.

Celebrating Christmas Eve at Boat Shoes' place!

Boat Shoes’ family invited my family to join them for a Christmas Eve service at Bayside Church for their afternoon church service. It’s been a while since we attended a church service as a family, but this one was ahhh-mazing. I’ve been to a few of Bayside‘s services before and was pretty amazed and how great they were: fun, engaging and relatable; a far cry from Catholic masses of my youth. After the service, we headed back to Boat Shoes’ place to have a Christmas Eve drink before heading home for dinner.

Family portrait. :)

Christmas Eve convo with nana.

I swear there isn't always a drink in her hand...

All in all, an amazing couple of days leading up to Christmas! We had a nice quiet dinner for Christmas Eve, complete with a Lifetime Christmas movie in the background (the critically-acclaimed Christmas Cupid, if you’re interested in watching). There’s really nothing like watching D-List actors re-create A Christmas Carol with a modern twist. Charles Dickens would be proud to know that Christina Milian knows his work so intimately.

Check back soon to see some snapshots of our Christmas in San Francisco!

xoxo from SF,

P.S. All photos courtesy of my sweet new camera! Quite the photos, right?

Getting ready for ice skating in Tahoe

P. and I started planning his trip to SF months before his arrival. He didn’t have anything too specific on his list but he had one special request: a trip to Tahoe. We were very fortunate in that Boat Shoes’ parents allowed us to use their place in Tahoe, making the trip infinitely more incredible than it would have been otherwise. The views of the lake are insanely gorgeous and despite the fact that there was zero snow for tubing, we ended up having an incredible weekend together.

Always gorgeous.

Boat Shoes, P. and I (along with another friend) headed up Friday night to get a headstart on the weekend. We did dinner at our all-time favorite North Shore eatery, Bite (I’ve talked about it before here and here), before heading to the Crystal Bay Club to try our luck at the casino. Sadly, it wasn’t the luckiest of nights, but fun nonetheless.

My dad and my sister joined us on Saturday morning for the weekend. Since snow tubing (which is what we had planned for Saturday) was a no-go, so we opted to head down to Northstar Village for a little iceskating. For $5 a person (for skate rentals), it was a really difficult option to beat.

P. & I trying to ice skate!

Time for couples skate!

P. & my sister tearing it up!

 We ended up spending a few hours hanging out at the village before heading back to the cabin for the remainder of the weekend. We did escape for an hour or so to grab dinner, but spent the day playing board games and having entirely too much fun playing Kinect. For anyone that hasn’t tried it out, it’s kind of like Wii but without a controller. It’s pretty brilliant and such a fun group game. I’m not much of a video gamer, but this is one that I could definitely get into!

Kinect dance off!

At some point in the night, my sister and Boat Shoes also had a mini Flip Cup battle to see who would be crowned king/queen of Flip Cup. I actually had a lot of faith in my sister, but Boat Shoes annihilated her.

Gearing up for Flip Cup!

All in all, it was a fun bonding weekend and despite the lack of snow, it was as gorgeous as ever. After spending the week in the city, I think it was a nice escape from the fast-paced life to a relaxing lakeside setting. After returning on Sunday, I had to say my goodbyes. My cousin jetted down to the Peninsula to spend time with other family members for his last day in California. The trip flew by but was such a blast! Now I’m just trying to convince Boat Shoes that a trip to Malta should be in the cards for sometime in 2012 or 2013. Fingers crossed.

xoxo,

San Francisco is, without a doubt, one of the most diverse cities in the world. Within a mile radius of my place, I can find authentic restaurants serving anything from Thai and Vietnamese to Greek and Italian; I can stumble into a Chinese Community Church or take a jaunt through North Beach or Chinatown. Yet, as diverse and accommodating as San Francisco is, there’s also something quintessentially American about it. The amazing steakhouses, old school seafood restaurants and 5-star restaurants unassumingly sprinkled about pay homage to the city of the 1920s.

My cousin, P., got to experience quite a bit of San Francisco’s diversity while he was here with lunch and dinner outings in the Mission, Chinatown and North Beach; definitely a far cry from the demographics of the Maltese islands. With Thursday night being our last big evening in the city before our Tahoe escape, we decided to make it a real San Franciscan experience. Our choice for dinner: the House of Prime Rib. 

Cheese and wine at dimly-lit Amelie.

My cousin and her boyfriend were able to come up from the Peninsula for the evening to join us for dinner. With an 8P dinner reservation, we decided to start our evening at nearby Amelie for happy hour before heading over to the HOPR. For some strange reason, I haven’t actually blogged about Amelie yet, but it is quite possibly one of my favorite happy hour spots of life. It was the one aspect of our evening that doesn’t fall into the ‘All American’ category — it’s French-inspired and staffed by Europeans — but it’s so fantastic that we had to give it a whirl. For happy hour, they have a you-pick wine flight option (3 wines of any they have on their extensive list) for $10. Seriously unbeatable and amazing. Their cheese plates just put them over the top.

Excited about our HOPR excursion!

After getting our head start at happy hour, we all headed down to Van Ness to experience the legend that is the House of Prime Rib. Boat Shoes has mentioned his deep-rooted love for this place on a number of occasions but didn’t really know that it was a place that we could actually go on a date. Let’s be honest, a restaurant that specializes in all things carnivorous isn’t exactly a vegetarian’s paradise. With my cousin in town and another meat-eating duo in tow, though, we were sold. The vibe is great — definitely an old school San Franciscan spot that makes you want to order a Manhattan even when you hate bourbon. It has that kind of power.

A 4-year anniversary celebration for B. and her boyfriend, A.

Meat eater's heaven?

Fittingly, everyone at the table ordered the House of Prime Rib cut which came with an insane amount of food: a salad starter and sides of potatoes, creamed spinach and yorkshire pudding. If you leave there hungry, you’re clearly doing something wrong. While they have a fish option, I wasn’t overly hungry so I ended up with the salad and a baked potato which were spectacular. Honestly, if I had ordered more food I very well may have exploded – they really don’t mess around with the portions.

Boat Shoes & I at the HOPR.

After dinner, we continued our evening at Johnny Foley’s, a dueling piano bar in the Union Square area. I am always a fan of piano bars and this place definitely didn’t disappoint. It was crowded when we arrived but we managed to snag a table and hang out until they performed their last song of the night. After leaving there, we decided to make one final stop at Bourbon & Branch, a speakeasy in the Tenderloin. We’ve been there once before, but this time I was much more awake for the experience. The concept of the place is awesome and their drinks are pretty stellar: think a great Cucumber Gimlet and a solid Old Fashioned. B&B was definitely a great call for a final stop – my cousin loved the vibe and the overall experience and it was definitely a great way to cap off an epic San Franciscan evening.

Stay tuned some pretty pictures from our weekend excursion to Tahoe!

xoxo,

With my cousin in town from Malta for a week, we tried to strategically plan our jaunts so he could get in as much of San Francisco as possible before we headed to Tahoe for the weekend (more on that to come). With two days and a number of evenings together (I mean, I did have to share him after all), I think we did a pretty decent job of cramming in some awesome sites, sounds and tastes without going overboard.

Photo op at the Hyde Street Pier. :)

As you may recall, Boat Shoes and I embarked on our own self-guided tour of San Francisco. We started at our home base in Nob Hill and made our way down Hyde Street to Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39 before heading through North Beach and Chinatown on the way home. It was a good 4+ hour jaunt and I thought it would be the perfect way for my out-of-town cousin to get an overview of some fun areas.

Seriously lucked out for December -- such a great day in SF.

We ended up grabbing lunch in Chinatown at a little hole-in-the-wall dim sum spot (Delicious Dim Sum on Jackson Street) where all orders were prepared to go. Now, my previous experience with dim sum was at Yank Sing with Boat Shoe Boy so my concept of pricing for dim sum was a bit skewed. The shop we popped into had signage only in Chinese (sadly, I haven’t mastered my Chinese literacy yet) so I had zero idea of pricing when we placed our order. The total? Around $6. For both of us. Seriously?! I had to ask her to repeat herself. Question of the year: why am I not eating every meal in Chinatown? After lunch, we headed home back in time to hang out and clean up before dinner in the Marina.

Our Tacolicious Spread.

We knew in advance that we were going to have two nights together for dinner in the city (Monday and Thursday) so we wanted to make them worth it. Considering my cousin hails from the Mediterrean, we wanted to make sure that he had a chance to experience food that’s different from what he can normally get at home. Monday night’s option? Mexican! Since we had to head down to the Marina for the evening, we chose to hit up one of the city’s newer gems, Tacolicious. Their taco options were pretty stellar and their pricing structure makes it super easy for group ordering (4 for $13 or 10 for $31). We made a few pit stops for drinks in the area to extend Paul’s Marina tour: the Balboa Cafe (always a gem) &  the Tipsy Pig (the Strawberry Fields are my go-to).

A little love at the Tipsy Pig - Strawberry Fields + Vodka/Lemonade

We definitely had a jam-packed Monday and I think P. definitely got a great overview of San Francisco for Day 1. Our Thursday evening was an epicly American night — more on that to come. Think steakhouses, piano bars + a speakeasy. #win

xoxo from San Francisco,

With the cousins at the Ferry Building!

My cousin, P., arrived from Malta last weekend and the last 9 days have been quite the whirlwind adventure (hence my lack of updates and photos). For his first weekend in town, we decided to spend Saturday morning exploring the Ferry Building and grabbing drinks/lunch in North Beach.

The Ferry Building is awesome on Saturday mornings so we spent a few hours perusing the farmer’s market, popping into shops and enjoying the uncharacteristically beautiful San Francisco weather before heading to North Beach for drinks and a light bite.

Peroni & Bellinis for the win!

We made our way to Panta Rei where we stocked up on $3 bellinis and Peronis in true Italian fashion. My aunt and uncle rounded out the crew and came up from The Peninsula to meet up with us for drinks and a quick bite before parting ways.

At Panta Rei in North Beach.

In honor of our international guest, we organized a family dinner/reunion to welcome him and allow everyone to say hi while he was in the US. I come from a pretty huge family (my mom has eleven siblings) so our get together ended up being a great reunion — I got to see some cousins that I hadn’t seen in almost 20 years! Insanity.

With a few cousins. :)

Leave it to the Maltese - 'Welcome to American.' :)

Boat Shoes & the fam!

With nana.

With my sister!

Lots of people, lots of food and an awesome time catching up with family members. It’s always great getting to reconnect with my cousins and it was even nicer getting to see everyone during the holiday season. Bonus: Boat Shoe Boy has officially been indoctrinated into the craziness of a Maltese family. Welcome!

Love from San Francisco,

Oh, fall.

So, Thanksgiving weekend has somehow already come and gone and I’m now back in the city, preparing for the weekend ahead. While our Thanksgiving was pretty low key, it was definitely nice to reconnect with the family and kick off the holiday season. I started off the Thanksgiving holiday by getting my hair done — my intention was to chop it off and darken it but it managed to come out looking lighter than when I went in. In any case, I’m now rocking shoulder-length locks and still adjusting to the pea-sized amount of shampoo I can get away with.

Thanksgiving day kicked off our board game extravaganza. My game of Scattergories (my most favorite game ever) is MIA right now, so we ended up playing a round of Cranium, Picture This and a few intense rounds of Wii bowling (my grandma’s fave). Per my request, I was paired up with my grandma. While our team wasn’t the best, it was by far the most entertaining… there’s nothing quite like humming ‘Say My Name’ by Destiny’s Child to your grandma while she looks on quizzically. This game clearly wasn’t made for 85+ year olds.

On the bright side, Wii bowling apparently was made for 85 year olds because my grandma is borderline-obsessed with that game. She manages to conjure some secret energy source from within and gets more spares and strikes than I do in any given game. If you know us, please tell me these Miis aren’t spot-on. My dad’s is uncanny:

If you know us, this has to be funny...

  We celebrated that evening with a delish dinner and ended up with one overstuffed family, dog included. Side note, how cute is my sister’s dog (my nephew?) in his new sweater?!

Tulio Before

Tulio After

I was so impressed – my sister made his sweater plus whipped up some scarves and hats for the winter.

I caught up with my friend, H., on Friday and then headed over to Boat Shoes’ family’s home to spend the evening with them enjoying leftovers, too much wine and a solid Christmas flick, Christmas Vacation. How have I really never seen that before?!

Boat Shoes came over on Saturday to spend the day with my family and joined us for a few rounds of Cranium and a riveting game of Wii bowling. For the record, I’ve discovered that Cranium is a true bonding experience and a good measure of how one plays into family dynamics. Our game was definitely a success. We spent our last evening watching a movie, unnecessarily munching on candy and eating leftover pumpkin pie before having to face the real world again.

All in all, a nice, quiet Thanksgiving with the people that I love the most! It was wonderful getting to see my family; getting to spend an evening with Boat Shoes’ family made it even more memorable. What’s better than an amazing family? Two amazing families! I win.

xoxo from San Francisco,

I’m grateful for my wonderfully supportive family that’s always encouraged me to follow my heart.

I’m thankful for my incredibly brilliant, supportive, caring, ambitious, hilarious (the list of adjectives can go on forever) partner in crime and his fantastic family. They have successfully reminded me of how wonderful family dinners can truly be.

I’m constantly grateful for all of the opportunities that I’ve been afforded in life and for being born into a society where I’m blessed with so many freedoms. It’s so easy to take things for granted (e.g. food, clothing, clean water, medicine, education) and to focus on the things that we don’t have in life. While today is a great day to take a minute and appreciate all of the things that we’re blessed with, I think it would do us all well to remember how privileged we are on a daily basis. Thanksgiving always reminds me to focus on what’s truly important, to live each day to the fullest and to always appreciate the people and experiences that make every day of life worth living.

Thank you to everyone who has made life so wonderful.

Happy Thanksgiving!

]]> http://www.thetravelingscholar.com/2011/11/thankful/feed/ 1 http://www.thetravelingscholar.com/2011/10/holiday-visitor/ http://www.thetravelingscholar.com/2011/10/holiday-visitor/#comments Wed, 05 Oct 2011 22:14:05 +0000 ShannonElizabeth http://www.thetravelingscholar.com/?p=8450 Continue reading →]]>

P. & I in Gozo

I absolutely love hosting. Cocktail parties, costume parties or guests — I love it all! Since I’m such a planner/organizer, having an out-of-town guest gives me a great reason to throw around ideas and get excited. I actually think planning is half the fun!

That being said, I couldn’t have a better reason to get excited! In addition to the normal festivites associated with the upcoming holiday season, December has a whole new reason to sparkle. My cousin, P., is heading out from Malta to San Francisco for ten days to explore the Golden State! I realize December isn’t exactly California’s time to shine, but the winter still has its perks: he’ll get to be here for the holiday season, plus he’ll likely have an encounter with snow-capped Tahoe. As a kid from Malta, I can wager that snow isn’t a regular occurrence for him.

Lake Tahoe

Since he’ll only be in California for a week and a half, I’m trying to figure out what to put on his list of things to see. Being a California native, I feel like I take some of our local surroundings for granted. There are so many things we can do during that period: a day trip to Napa for wine tasting? A weekend outing in Tahoe for snow tubing? In San Francisco alone, there are a million things to see and do: the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, the Palace of Fine Arts, the SF MOMA, Union Square for shopping, a trip to North Beach or Chinatown and dinner/drinks at any of the city’s amazing bars and restaurants!

So, I need your help here.

If you were visiting Northern California for the first time, what would be on your agenda?

Leave me some comments below so we can get to planning!

Love from California,

With my dad’s birthday creeping up, I started thinking of potential birthday gifts a bit earlier than usual this year. After a few conversations and tossing around some ideas, the thought of attending a Renaissance Faire came up. We’ve been to a couple before and my dad’s definitely a fan (though not a dress-up-as-a-knight-attend-every-year fan). After doing a bit of research, I wasn’t surprised that the majority of big faires had passed. Good weather would seem an important part of an outdoor festival and the fall is far too unpredictable. As luck would have it though, KVMR’s Annual Celtic Festival was slated to fall the weekend of October 1st, long before my dad’s November 18th birthday, but close enough to make it work.

The four of us at the Celtic Festival

The festival began in that late 90s and the radio station, KVMR, has continued to host the event annually. It started as a music festival and while music is still a huge component of the faire, it’s now a full-on two-day event complete with loads of vendors, Scottish sports, parades, etc. If you’ve never been to a faire like this before, be warned: these people are hardcore. I’m pretty sure they breed them from a young age. We nabbed four tickets (dad; my sister, T.; my grandma and I) and made our way down Saturday morning to check it out.

Drawing some crowds:

The Parade

Gathered to listen to the music

I have to admit, while I expected it to be decent with it’s $40 per person price tag, it definitely exceeded my expectations! The music was great, the people-watching was epic and there were an incredible number of vendors peddling their goods; everything from metalwork and handcrafted jewelry to rapiers, slingshots and homemade mead.

'Horns for Every Occasion'

Scented Necklaces -- Who DOESN'T need one?

My sweet new find!

Some awesome necklaces by Stone Circle Studio

We wandered around for hours, got a few fun pieces of jewelry and noshed on some not-so-authentic cuisine. Admittedly, we were tempted by both the face paint and the henna but opted out… I’m now kind of wishing the face paint would have happened. There were a couple of drink areas set up for people to grab beer, wine and/or mead and while I only had one drink (an obligatory mead), we hit up the beer tent about four times for T. & dad. Even grandma got involved with an Irish coffee.

Knightro in hand.

With T. at the bar.

Nana & T. ready to rock!

All in all, I think we had a great time! My grandma, who came along for the experience, was approached by a guy dressed up as Merlin and was thoroughly confused by the whole encounter. She glanced at me for guidance but I was loving it far too much:

Merlin hitting on nana.

So confused...

While the faire is a two-day event (you can pay for a weekend ticket including camping), I think one day is more than enough to experience everything the festival has to offer. While looking around, I couldn’t help but wonder how people get into this kind of thing. Don’t get me wrong, I think these faires are kind of fun on occasion, but I honestly wonder how the regulars get into this scene.

Anyone else hit up the Celtic Festival?
Any other ones going on that I should know about?

xoxo from California,

It’s pretty crazy how fast time flies…

Boat Shoe Boy and I just celebrated a mini milestone in our relationship and spent Friday evening enjoying a carpet picnic and political banter while packing for his upcoming two-week tour de America.

All smiles :)

Despite the fact that we’d noshed on some oysters in San Francisco the day before, I stuck with my original plan of having an at-home oysterfest à deux. The idea was a bit half-baked considering I have never shucked an oyster before in my life, but it actually ended up being really fun and only moderately dangerous. For the record, butter knives work in lieu of a proper oyster shucker. {For an oyster shucking tutorial, click here.}

Oysterfest.

The rest of our carpet picnic was a product of Whole Foods and their awesome staff. I went in with a vague idea of what I wanted and left a pretty happy camper after a conversation with their cheesemonger and their beer sommelier. All in all, a low-key but successful evening. Sadly, I had to say goodbye to Boat Shoes on Saturday morning as he departed for Chicago/the Florida Keys/Vegas. The next time I see him will be in Vegas in two weeks where we’ll be attending the Jimmy Buffett concert!

While I try not to be overly sappy (‘try’ is the operative word here), I can’t not include a few pics from the last few months… it fits with the theme and who am I to betray a potentially photo-filled blog post?

First SF trip, April 2011

Bay to Breakers, May 2011

With Grandma in San Diego for S.'s wedding, June 2011

At the Wild Animal Park in SD, June 2011

Tahoe, Summer 2011

Having dinner in Anguilla, August 2011

Dune Preserve, Anguilla, August 2011

Beach photo shoot, Anguilla 2011

Pulling into St. Martin, September 2011

Lobsterfest for Grandma's Birthday, Sept. 2011

At the American Cancer Society Gala, September.

我爱你  船鞋穿着男孩

 xoxo,