New Year's Trip: Day 5: San Fran to Reno and Happy New Year!

We had to be up in time to meet our friend Josh for breakfast in San Francisco. We followed Aprille's recommendation to visit Mama's, a breakfast cafe that always has a line. We waited for an hour and a half, and it was nice because we took that opportunity to talk with Josh and catch up. It is always a little difficult if the restaurant is too efficient because you're trying to talk while voraciously cramming omelets in your face. As we got to second in line, a man exiting the restaurant with his family said to everyone in line, "it's worth it!" A boost! Luckily it was a nice sunny day in the city, despite being winter.

It took almost another half hour to get seated, but in the meantime we placed our order and got a breakfast bread, some crumb cake and a sour cream blueberry cake (they were both really soft and scrumptious). When we got up to the counter the guy in charge of the register told us the longest line was between three and four weeks--seriously, though 3 hours.

I ordered an Italian omelet with garlic jack cheese mushrooms fresh basil and pancetta. Gregory ordered another Benedict, this one with prosciutto and tomatoes over an English muffin. I don't know if it was the wait, or anticipation, but the food was really good.

Overall, Mama's was amazing, but I don't know if I want to do this again. Mostly because there are a million restaurants of similar quality in San Francisco, and I feel like I should exhaust all the other options before I start a revisitation tour. If I happen by again and the line isn't too long, I can see myself jonesing for an order of one of their many signature French Toasts.

We had a fairly long drive to Reno and so we said farewell to Josh and left for our next stop: lunch! ...in Sacramento. After a couple of hours we weren't hungry at all, but nonetheless met a friend of David's at Bernardo's Cafe. It was nice afternoon with some nice conversation with Corey, as Gregory and I split a grilled salmon sandwich and sipped a, get this: hot apple chai. After lunch was over, I got a soy latte to go and Gregory got a regular chai latte to go. Neither were particularly exciting. We enjoyed the sandwich, but their drinks need some work.

We said goodbye to Corey and to San Francisco and headed to Reno. The drive was without incident and we didn't stop again until we got to a rest stop at Donner Summit, just above Reno. Basically we stopped in order to fulfill the tradition of eating a tourist. The hunt was quick, the kill was clean and the tourist was delicious, but we didn't want to fill up on the ultimate game. My sister had just texted to let me know she had picked up some Papa Murphy's take and bake pizza for dinner. I love Papa Murphy's and am sad there isn't one in the Los Angeles area. For a while there was one up in Ventura, but a four-hour round trip is a bit far, no matter how good the pizza.

We arrived to my sister's lovely home, and were excitedly greeted by Beth the dog. Sad that Beth the human wasn't with us, but at least we had an equally gregarious "Beth-entity" to fill the void. Being New Year's Eve, we played games (board games, not emotional mind games) and drank warming drinks, and just before midnight we broke out the funny hats, and champagne and counted down with Ryan Seacrest and Dic Clark, who had been dug up and reanimated just in time to ring in 2012. Then we blew the noise makers and banged pots and pans. My dad didn't bring his black powder rifle this year, though, so no deafening blast. We would have to count on our vibrant air horns and loud fashion to compensate.

2011 was a pretty good year, but I'm looking forward to 2012. I feel it is going be even more interesting and rewarding year. Even if it ends in a zombie apocalypse, it sure will make next year's Christmas interesting, "Oh brains! You shouldn't have... nom, nom, nom."