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Flying With Faber: Our Annual Trip to San Francisco
By Stuart J. Faber
The Dining Room at Farallon, San Francisco. (Courtesy Farallon)In the course of each year, my job takes me to the four corners of the planet. One week, I may be in Shanghai. A week later, I am on the other end of the globe – perhaps London. In between, I might visit places that some folks might regard is less glamorous.
That’s okay with me – I’m not always looking for glamour. You know, at times you might love to dine on gourmet cuisine (I’ve never quite understood what the term means), on a table adorned with white linen and bone China plates. Other times, it’s just as exciting, or even more so, to saunter into a dive in a small, obscure town and have a down-home sizzling steak or burger dinner. (For the latter, I’ve often written about, and rhapsodized over, one of my favorite joints in America – Jocko’s steak house in Nipomo, Calif. I can’t count the times we’ve flown or driven from Los Angeles just to devour one of their steaks).
The point is that I often can derive just as much pleasure and exhilaration, or more, from a trip to some off-the-beaten-path village as I can from strolling down the Champs Elysees. But when asked about my favorite places in the world, San Francisco is always near the top of the list.
One reason is that the environs of this city are so magnificent and unique that, as is true with all genuine beauty, the pulchritude increases with each observation. Another is that San Francisco was my boyhood home for two years during WWII. Some force draws me back each year.
The Airport
Flying with Faber: A Drive Along the California Coast
By Stuart J. Faber
Hidden Beach at Pescadero. (Stuart J. Faber)Whenever I travel, especially in California, my conveyance of choice is my airplane. For example, I can fly from Los Angeles to the Bay Area in just one-and-a-half hours. On a good day, the same trip by car takes around seven hours. A few friends of mine have bragged that they have whizzed along Interstate 5 and made it in five-and-a-half to six hours. To those who have never driven along the dreary I-5, I certainly don’t recommend it. Along that route to San Francisco, there is little scenery other than miles of arid flatland with hardly a tree or body of water along the way. Several gas stations, along with a Denny’s here or there, look no different than similar car-stops on any Interstate in the country. Perhaps the mile-high advertising signs are substitutes for trees. One exception: Harris Ranch with its great restaurant and hotel (not to mention, its own landing strip), about halfway up the road is one of my favorite places.
There are times when Cheryl, or others whose enthusiasm for flying, especially in heavy IFR conditions, is somewhat less than mine, will conspire to conduct an aviation intervention. Screaming, kicking and scratching, I will be forcibly removed from my airplane, strapped in a car seat and pointed in the direction of our destination. Even under those circumstances, there is one thing upon which I will insist – we must avoid the Interstates.
Flying with Faber: Queenstown, New Zealand
One of the Most Beautiful Places in the World
By Stuart J. Faber
Part One
Downtown Queenstown. (Stuart J. Faber)For the past 40-plus years, my life as a travel and culinary journalist has taken me to more than 100 countries and every state in the Union. One might assume that I have grown weary and jaded with travel – quite the contrary. Each time I board a plane, be it my own or one operated by a commercial carrier, a wave of excitement overcomes me. As I step off the plane for the first touch of the foreign soil, the excitement intensifies – just as if it were my first time away from home.
It has been more than 30 years since my last visit to New Zealand. Although I have a love affair with many foreign and domestic destinations, I have always cradled a special yearning to return to these South Pacific islands. As soon as I stepped on the tarmac of Queenstown (the airport has no jet ways), I knew why. It seemed as if nothing had changed.
Flying With Faber - April 2013
Seventy Years of San Francisco
By Stuart J. Faber
For some reason, it almost seems as if New Year’s day shows up twice a year. Perhaps it seems that way because, as I get older, the years grow shorter.
For almost 20 years, I’ve been making an annual New Year’s trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Last December, as I commenced the planning of this year’s trip, I felt as if I had planned the previous excursion just a few months before.
I’ve always regarded San Francisco as my second home. My first love remains my boyhood home in Wisconsin, however, my memories of the wartime years (WWII, that is), some of which were spent in San Francisco, always generate a groundswell of nostalgia. As we flew into the Bay Area and I commenced my descent into Oakland International Airport, it occurred to me that it had been exactly 70 years since my very first glimpse of the city.