Cool Blogger Meet Up!

May 22, 2025 /

I got together with Birchie! And San! We had Tapas!

As you may know, Birchie was in California recently, and split her time between Sacramento and San Francisco. So I drove to Sacramento last Tuesday after work to meet her for dinner, so we could also meet up with San. When I got there, San was still at work, so I picked Birchie up at her AirBnB, and we went to a little park nearby. The main attraction is Sutter’s Fort, which is one of the first European colonial forts in the Central Valley of California, before the Gold Rush, but it was closed, so we couldn’t go inside.

Mama and her Ducklings
Turtle
Duck

That was fine, we walked around and admired ducks and turtles and fountains. I tried to turn the picture of the turtle for you, but since I have it in the gallery, it doesn’t want to turn. C’est la vie.

After a bit, we heard from San that she was home from work, and we picked her up, and then went to one of her favorite restaurants, Tapa the World. I can see why it’s a favorite! They had both indoor and outdoor seating, and we chose to sit outside in a little courtyard. The service was good, and the food was delicious! We eschewed larger dinner plates and instead shared tapas, which are small appetizer sized servings. It seems like we’re all pretty much omnivores, so we had their delicious bread with a balsamic/garlic dipping sauce, empanadas, mushrooms in garlic/wine/parsley, fried eggplant, and Kobe beef. Everything was excellent, but I think my favorite items were the eggplant and the empanadas. We didn’t take any pictures of our food, we are clearly not food bloggers.

We neglected to take a group photo until it was dark and the lighting was bad and the staff had to take our picture so we would finally leave and let them close up for the night, but we’re cute anyway. Also, we didn’t pick a very pretty backdrop.

The thing is, as always, meeting bloggers that you know online is AWESOME. Birchie and San IRL are just as they are on their blogs. Funny and interesting and smart and opinionated and just what you want in a friend and dining companion. Highly recommended.

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OK, wow, I went in to wordpress to write this post, and it looks like I started it last week. I guess I started out blogging about Sacramento, and then decided to not post anything until I had gotten all of my visits in, especially since Ted and I were gone for the weekend. So much has happened in the last week (meaning, busy busy fun fun).

The trip to visit San and Birchie was on Tuesday, and then on Thursday, Birchie was moving from Sacramento to San Francisco. That’s kind of a pain in the ass on public transportation (though she had managed most of it in reverse going from SFO to SAC), so I thought I would work a half day, and she could take Amtrak from Sacramento to the station closest to me, which is Martinez. We could have lunch, tour the John Muir Historic Site, and then go to San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge. So that’s what we did!

Here we are in front of a lovely pomegranate bush, which shows nothing of the John Muir Historic Site, nor of our delicious lunch. We dined at Roxx on Main, which is the only restaurant I know in Martinez. They have an excellent veggie burger, which the chef took years to develop. The chef trained with Alice Waters from Chez Panisse, so she knows her stuff. Ted works in Martinez and often gets the burger, so I’ve tasted it, but my heart remains with the roasted turkey and avocado. If you’re ever in Martinez, I highly recommend Roxx on Main, and FYI, they host live music most Thursdays through Sundays in the evening, though we haven’t been.

This is the historic house where John Muir and his family lived for the last years of his life. Yes, we went up to the attic and yes, we got to ring the bell. Is it a fabulous attraction? No, I’d say 7/10 (a solid C) but add in time chatting and exploring with Birchie bumps it to a 10/10.

From there we drove to San Francisco via the Richmond bridge, through Marin County, and then over the Golden Gate Bridge. YAY for beautiful weather, because when San Francisco is having a good day, she’s glamorous. I thought it might be cool to show Birchie our beautiful Palace of Fine Arts, which was built for the Panama Pacific International Exposition, when the City wanted to show the world that they were back after the devastating earthquake and fire of 1906. Fun fact for Little House fans, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter Rose lived in San Francisco in 1915, and Laura came and visited her, and they visited the expo, so she would have seen this same beautiful structure. The exhibition hall used to house The Exploratorium, but that moved to a more appropriate site in 2013. There is also a small theater, where I saw the only opera I’ve ever attended, The Marriage of Figaro. Anyway, it’s a really pretty part of town. We walked around the lake and scoped out houses to decide where we might want to purchase one for future blogger meet ups. You know, if we won the lottery. We saw lots of birds and turtles. Then we went to Chrissy Field, which is a little beach on the Bay, with a beautiful view of the GG Bridge.

Apparently I did not take any photos from Chrissy Field, so here is a very old one of Maya playing in the waves way back in the early aughts. Once you get through the Golden Gate and visit the ocean, the waves are much larger and not really safe, so this is a great option if you want to get your feet wet in the cold briny water.

From there we went and got Birchie settled into her AirBnB, then explored the neighborhood, which was perfectly located a few blocks north of Golden Gate Park. We took a walk to see what was nearby, and it turned out that she was close to a restaurant I’d always been curious to try, Pacific Cafe, which is known for their seafood. A glass of wine and some fresh oysters sounded really good to us, so off we went. They didn’t have any oysters on their menu, so we ordered some clam chowder, some Caesar salad, and some scallops to share, along with some wine. The clam chowder was SO meh, and we were not hungry enough for meh food, so we sent it back. Everything else was delicious.

Birchie had her own adventures over the weekend, and I had mine (more on that later!), and on Tuesday I worked for a few hours, then picked her up, and we went to explore what little I know of the Peninsula. We started out with sandwiches at a little cafe (delicious!) and then moved on to our real objective. Anne mentioned once how much she loved Filoli Gardens when she spent time in the area, and a coworker mentioned it to me a month or so ago, so we decided to check it out.

The house and gardens were stunning, and again, we had perfect weather. It was warm but not hot.

Some kind strangers took our photo…I wish I had taken off my hat. It was a very sunny day!

Beautiful gardens, fancy house. We picked out my home office, but as we did not have access to the upstairs, we could not pick out bedrooms. We considered buying the house for future blogger meetups, but shockingly, there are no upstairs balconies from which to enjoy a cup of tea or a cocktail while visiting, so we declined to make an offer.

After that we visited the Pulgas Water Temple, which is the terminus point for water that flows from the Hetch Hetchy dam in Yosemite and brings water to San Francisco and several other Bay Area cities. This was a big deal, ensuring water in such an arid place, back after the earthquake of 1906 (again with the earthquake!), so they built a little temple. It’s a pretty place to take pictures, and we saw several graduates and a young girl posing for quinceañera photos. Apparently I didn’t take any photos here, so I lifted one from the website. There is a nice hike you can take that would have been lovely, but I wore the wrong shoes.

Instead, we went to San Bruno Burlingame and walked around a bit, then found a spot to have a snack while waiting for traffic to let up a bit for my drive home. Years ago I had lunch with an old timey blogger friend, Tracy, and some IRL and URL friends, at a nearby Mexican restaurant. (Tracy is going to come up again in another post soon, which is why I mention her here.) That place closed maybe 10 years ago, but I figured it might be a nice place to walk around and find a restaurant. I remember it as being little independent shops, and it is not that, it is all chain stores. Whether it was chain stores back in 2009, I don’t remember. Anyway, we found a Michelin recommended Indian restaurant, Rasoi, and had a snack and a drink. In addition to the pakoras and samosas shown with Birchie and her yummy Cosmo, we had tandoori wings which were messy but really good.

After I dropped Birchie off at her airport hotel, I was reminded of why I am thankful that I do not have to commute. There was a fire on one of the BART lines earlier in the day, which meant that a lot of folks drove to work who normally would not, so traffic was very heavy, even though I waited until close to 8:00 to leave for home. I liked this mural I spotted while waiting for traffic to move.

My final review of time spent with blog friends is 1,000/10. We all ‘know’ each other, though of course there are stories that we don’t tell on our blogs. But we feel comfortable enough, and we’re nosey enough, that we can share lots of little details about our lives. When the three of us were together last week, I asked a personal banking type question, and I prefaced it with, ‘if this is too personal, please feel free to not answer’, and Birchie said, ‘I challenge you to ask a question we will not answer.’ HA! So yeah, we talked about separate checking accounts vs joint within a marriage, do you ask for a receipt when you buy something (I do, but often I then just throw them away without looking at them), do you balance your checkbook, have you ever tried noise cancelling headphones, what is your favorite ice cream flavor, on and on. Lots of talk about dogs, about Mulder and Stepdog and Doggo. We could have talked forever I think. I highly recommend time with Birchie and San if you can manage it.

40 Comments

  • Allison McCaskill

    May 22, 2025 at 2:07 pm Reply

    Aieeee, your gorgeous faces all together! You ROCKED that hat though, and I always look stupid in hats so I am jealous of that AND your cool blogger meet-up (stupid geography. Stupid border). Love all of this, the food, the colours, the joy.

  • Margaret

    May 22, 2025 at 2:08 pm Reply

    I’ve loved every blog meet up I’ve had; we get to know people closely from their blogs and then they can flesh things out face to face. (the unbloggable stories) You saw beautiful sights and ate gourmet food. How wonderful to have such adventures!

  • Birchie

    May 22, 2025 at 2:42 pm Reply

    I am here to confirm every word that you wrote. I don’t think that you realize how much more that I got out of my time in SF because I had you as a guide to get settled in. 1000000/10 everyone reading this needs to get a plane ticket to SF ASAP.

    I can’t wait to hear the story of your weekend. I got a preview from talking to you and saw a few pictures, but I can’t wait to read the deep dive.

    Safe to say that it was a good week for all of us! Until next time!

  • Elisabeth

    May 23, 2025 at 5:38 am Reply

    This post brought such a big smile to my face (along with a wince of jealousy)! I’m so glad this worked out and it sounds like a delightful time was had by all.

    Fingers crossed I’m going to get to see THREE MORE bloggers this year (including Birchie!). I am antsy with the anticipation.

  • Jenny

    May 23, 2025 at 6:27 am Reply

    Oh wow- you and Birchie got to spend SO MUCH TIME together!!! I’m envious! I did meet Birchie in February, but it was not as extensive as this visit. And you saw San (had you and San met before this?) Also, you guys saw so many cool things. This all sounds really fun, and is motivating me to meet more bloggers IRL. Sadly I doubt I’ll get out to CA anytime soon, but I will be in the midwest, which is a little blogging mecca.

    • J

      May 23, 2025 at 7:26 am Reply

      Jenny, originally I had thought we would spend a little weekend time together, but then we went out of town for the weekend. And San’s situation meant that she couldn’t come to the Bay Area. So I decided to take some PTO and maximize the fun, and I’m really glad that I did.

      Stupidly, this is my first NorCal blogger meetup. San is so lovely, I hope to get together with her again when things settle down in her life.

  • nance

    May 23, 2025 at 12:41 pm Reply

    Love these photos (except now I’m hungry, especially for samosas). How wonderful that you had all this time with Birchie and San. AND IN CALIFORNIA WHERE THE WEATHER IS *NOT* DOING AWFUL CLEVELAND THINGS.

    Am I jealous? Yes.

    Lovely ladies, lovely food, lovely places–a lovely time had by all.

  • San

    May 23, 2025 at 8:55 pm Reply

    As I said (probably one too many times), meeting you both was the highlight of my last week! I am so, so happy we can made it happen. Thank you again for driving out here to Sacramento and I love that you got to spend so much more precious time with Birchie. You’re both gems and just as cool and lovely as I imagined! Hope to meet up with you again soon (we really don’t live that far away from each other ;)).

    • J

      May 23, 2025 at 9:32 pm Reply

      San, I WOULD LOVE THAT, let’s make it happen! You are so lovely, I would love to spend more time with you and any other bloggers in our area.

  • Lisa’s Yarns

    May 24, 2025 at 4:49 am Reply

    What an amazing meet up! I’ve met both of these ladies and actually got to see Birchie TWICE! Now I need to meet you! I love how well we all know each other. Our relationships are deep and when we meet up, it’s like seeing a lifelong friend. My blog friends honestly know more about what is going on in my life than any other friend group.

  • Stephany

    May 25, 2025 at 9:37 am Reply

    I love this so much! Birchie is such a fun companion who is really up for anything. It looks like you really got to maximize your time with her. Hooray!

  • Suzanne

    May 26, 2025 at 8:52 am Reply

    Ahhhhhh!!! Three gorgeous bloggers all together! How fun! Thank you for the postcard, btw — SUCH a fun surprise to get in the mail!

    Good call on not buying the house with no (????) balconies (????). Very disappointing.

    I always ask for a reciept and then I let my husband deal with it. Super feminist of me, I know it. Once in a great while I have needed an old receipt, so I’m mainly glad we’re in the habit of holding on to them.

    • J

      May 26, 2025 at 9:15 am Reply

      Thank you for recoginzing that we made the right decision regarding the blogger meet up house!

      I always get receipts and then half of the time I don’t even look at them, which is ridiculous, but if something goes wrong I want to have some sort of proof. My husband never looks at them, and if given the options says, ‘no thanks’. Which at least is consistent,

  • Daria

    May 27, 2025 at 7:43 am Reply

    Isn’t it wonderful to meet not one but TWO bloggers in real life??? We know so much about each other through our writing and now there is a chance to meet face-to-face. How truly special! I had a pleasure to meet Maya from poco brat and what a delightful morning/afternoon that was. One day I’m gonna meet YOU, Julie!

  • Kyria @ Travel Spot

    May 27, 2025 at 8:30 pm Reply

    OMG, how fun! I am laughing because I am a fan of John Muir and lived in the Bay Area for years and I never went to his house. Nor did I go to many of the places that you guys went to! Ha. I mean obviously I have been to Crissy Field and GG Bridge, but none of the outlying stuff. Funny how that works. PS I love your hat; it makes you look so chic! I am glad that you kept it on! Also, I knew you would love Birchie and I am so glad that you guys had so much fun. I am only not glad that I was not there to share it!

    • J

      May 28, 2025 at 1:43 pm Reply

      Kyria, I don’t think it would have occurred to me to take anyone to John Muir’s house, but I was picking Birchie up on Martinez, and that’s the only thing I know to do there. I’m looking forward to her blog post with pictures of things she did on her solo time, she had 4 days and really made the most of them.

      I was glad for the excuse to go to Filoli. I rarely go to the penninsula, it feels like such an ordeal, and there is so much to do in SF so why bother. But hey, we had to get her to the airport area anyway, so it was a perfect excuse.

      Thanks for the hat compliment. I bought it to wear on my cruise next month, and it happened to arrive in the mail right when I was leaving to pick her up, so I took it with me. I’m glad I did, it was bright that day!

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