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Slowly getting back into blogging, I’ve been away awhile… but I just had to put a plug in here for something I read in a NZ Herald story the other day – 100% Pure NZ (NZ’s Tourism Authority) have hooked up with Google Earth to display lots of great content about NZ to the world. And it’s brilliant (or not, depending on your point of view) for homesick kiwis like myself.
Check it out. Just make sure you have ‘view all layers’ selected, and go to the ‘Travel and Tourism’ section.
When we were in San Francisco, the ever-present Starbucks were not only a source of pleasant-tasting slightly overpriced caffeine, but the much needed journey into one of them just happened to provide an inspiring moment for me: They had a campaign going called ‘the way I see it’, and had various quotes on the sides of their coffee cups – to aid customers in the generation of conversation, one would assume. And as with any marketing campaign worth its salt, it’s created a little controversy.
Well the quote on my coffee cup was very, very cool. So cool I pointed my video camera at it and filmed it, and as such, there’s now a capture from the footage on my desktop. Talk about dedication!
I think after an introduction, I’d better get on and tell you the quote:
“When I began writing, the words that inspired me were these: ‘A writer is someone who has written today.’ If you want to be a writer, what’s stopping you?” J.A. Jance, crime novelist
Very appropriate material for a blog, don’t you think?
In the midst of London winning the 2012 Games, loads of companies are placing ads in the papers to pat London on the back, so to speak. My favourite so far, a small ad by Eurostar:
‘If London gets a bit busy in the summer of 2012, you could always go to Paris’
To celebrate the addition of images to Blogger.com’s services, we must throw up a few images of San Franciso: The photos were taken from our new video camera, the Sony HC90E, which is a great little piece of kit! We have nearly 3 60min tapes worth of footage between home (some cute stuff of the boys), SF, and London; so when we get our computer set up there will be some serious editting to do.
But back to SF: First of all I should mention the suprise find of our five days in the Bay area, The Ferry Building:
Sara loved the little shops and well, lets face it, so did I! Still operating as a ferry terminal, it’s been totally restored and fitted out with shops, cafes, and the best burger joint in America: Taylors Refresher! It had only just been completed the year before we arrived, and the first ever ‘farmers markets’ started the day before we arrived, so the timing was incredible. God is good! (see an earlier post below!).
We think we spent just the right amount of time in SF, and the weather was stunning for our stay. We did all the usual touristy things, went out to Golden Gate bridge of course, and we did a day’s wine tour up the Napa Valley too. The only thing we didn’t do was take a ride on the really old trolley cars, but we skooted about on the ‘F Line’ trolley cars quite frequently.
It seems San Francisco was the home 
of chocolate, which was just fine by us! There seemed to be no end of little specialty shops to tempt us. One of the standout brands which was pretty much everywhere, was Scharffen Berger. Totally Yum! (We recommend the ‘Semi Sweet’ dark).
Anyway, that’s enough from me. Lunch time beckons!
