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Three Minutes, Twenty Seconds to Fall in Love with San Francisco

Like anyone really needs more of a reason to fall in love with San Francisco, the tourism board has developed a cute, heartwarming video showcasing all the little bites of life that make SF...well, SF. And there literally are bites, of pancakes.

The video is titled "A Day in the Life," but all the different neighborhoods, landmarks and little social experiences make it more of a week, or several weeks if you're an average visitor trying to hit them all.

It's definitely no ">time-lapse, tilf-shift Lisbon, but it is a nice watch if you're trying to convince yourself to hit the City by the Bay in 2012, or if you already live there and want to fall back in love with the city.

In-Flight Cocktails / SFO / Airport Museums / Aviation History / KLM / → All Tags

Our Kind of History Lesson: In-Flight Cocktails Through The Years

We're not the only ones who like to sip on in-flight cocktails. The San Francisco International Airport is also a bit of a boozehound as evidenced by this SFO Museum exhibit at Terminal 1 which centers on in-flight cocktail service during the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

The small display features glassware, swizzle sticks, coasters, drink menus and even cocktail napkins served by old-timey airlines like Pacific Southwest Airlines, National Airlines and Pan American Airlines as well as from still alive airlines like United, American and KLM.

Of course, the winner of the coolest glassware in the case award belongs to KLM for their ceramic Bols gin Delftware containers which are shaped like Dutch houses and filled with Bols Jenever gin. These ones here were given to first-class passengers in the 1980s. But if you're flying World Business Class today, you can score a Delft house of your own.

The exhibition is titled "Hydration, Libation, and Lift: Airline Inflight Beverage Service" and can be found in Terminal 1 at the A3 Entrance lobby from now until July 2012.

The Jauntys / Jaunted Awards 2011 / Travel Awards 2011 / Airports / SFO / T2 at SFO / Airport News / → All Tags

The Most Improved Airport of 2011 Is...

It's that time of the year again, the time when the year just plain ends. Alas, we can't just let 2011 go that easily, especially since travelers spent it both up in the air and up in arms over a crazy range of topics, encompassing everything from nudie scans to tarmac delays. Needless to say, we're ready for 2012, but first we're taking a brief look back at the best of 2011 with the Jaunted Travel Awards,—or as we fondly refer to them—The Jauntys.

Plenty of new airport restaurants arrived in terminals and concourses this year, and some airports are even getting brand new television shows once 2012 rolls around. However, there’s one airport that stands above the rest as the most improved. It’s not Minneapolis-St. Paul—although we do love us some MSP—nor is it Reagan National Airport despite its addition of a nine-foot tall statue of its namesake.

We’re picking San Francisco International Airport as the most improved airport of 2011.

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Inside the New Cathay Pacific Lounge at San Francisco International Airport

Finally. Finally! Cathay Pacific has finally opened a lounge of their very own on US soil, at San Francisco International's International Terminal. This is huge news for frequent flyers on Cathay to Hong Kong, but even for design buffs as the lounge includes the specially designed Solus Chair, first introduced at their Cabin lounge at HKG.

Because Cathay actually enjoys making their lounges somewhere you want to hang out, we'd recommend getting there early enough before your flight to relax in the fresh space. It opens up four hours before the first Cathay departure. All in all there's several seating areas, three shower rooms, seven private workstations (with printer), a snack center and noodle bar. Plus free WiFi of course.

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In-Flight Cocktails / Drinking Travel / Booze Travel / Virgin Atlantic / Virgin / Airline News / In-Flight Cocktail of the Month / In-Flight Drinks / San Francisco Travel / SFO / Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse / → All Tags

In-Flight Cocktail of the Month: Virgin Atlantic's 'Virgin Kiss'

As many already know, we have a serious obsession with airline cocktails, and so much is our passion that we've created a whole first-Friday-of-the-month feature called In-Flight Cocktail of the Month, which highlights the special concoctions that flight attendants whip up with only a cocktail shaker, some tiny liquor bottles and a whole lot of hope that it won't make you drunk and unruly.

Up until now, Virgin Atlantic's In-Flight Cocktail of the Month accolades have been the liquidy soundtrack to our past two summers. But a cocktail is for life, not just the hot months, so for December we're warming up with the SFO Clubhouse's signature cocktail: the Virgin Kiss.

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Inside the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse at SFO

There are airport lounges, and then there are Virgin Atlantic Clubhouses—the type of lounge that makes you pray for a flight delay. Happily, when we scored access to the Clubhouse at San Francisco International Airport the other week, we were early for our flight. Unhappily, it left on time. Here’s what we found.

The room is bright and airy, overlooking the runway like most lounges. But unlike most, it’s sexy. Take the vast bar, for example—it’s colored an icy blue, and takes up about half the length of the (lengthy) room. Propping up the bar is even more appealing when there’s a shelf of travel guides to flick through, too. Over by the window, facing the bar, is a row of armchairs.

There aren’t many snacks scattered around—just a plate of fruit and cookies at the bar—but, instead, the end section of the lounge works as a restaurant, with a cluster of TVs to watch while you wait for your table service, and pictures of pinups if you’re bored by the telly. By the window down that end are sofas, which also get table service. Windows have blue and pink-tinted filters over them, which is weird at first but quite soothing.

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It's All About The Trees On San Francisco's Nob Hill

We already knew San Francisco was worthy, green and eco-friendly – but we didn’t realize just what happy little green things they were until our most recent visit.

There we were walking down Nob Hill when we looked closer at the line of saplings planted along the street and saw that each had not only a little placard saying what they were, but also an inspirational quote about the importance of trees.

Here’s a nice one from JFK:

The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The marshall replied, ‘In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!’

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Got Milk? The Human Rights Campaign In San Francisco Definitely Has

It was as we were in San Francisco the week before last, strolling the Castro, chuckling at the names of places like Rock Hard the shop, the Sausage Factory restaurant and Hand Job (the nail salon) that we got ourselves a little jolt of history.

At 575 Castro Street (next to Hand Job, in fact) is the center for the Human Rights Campaign of San Francisco. It also happens to be the former premises of Castro Camera, the shop belonging to Harvey Milk.

Milk, of course, was assassinated in 1978, having being elected to San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors as America’s first openly gay man in public office.

The HRC center has a little bit of everything – from striking campaign stats by the front door of state by state views of same-sex marriage, adoption, and housing laws, and a timeline of gay rights in San Francisco, to various items of clothing and souvenirs of San Francisco – all to a jaunty soundtrack of Madonna.

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Catching The Best San Francisco Views On A 'Four Bridge Day'

No sign of Laura Palmer here

We may not have had such good luck with the Golden Gate Bridge on our recent trip to San Francisco, but going up here more than made up for it – this is the view from Twin Peaks.

It’s not as easy a place to reach as, say, Coit Tower, but, as we discovered this visit, it’s a much, much better vantage point. From Twin Peaks, get 360 degree views of the entire city, taking in the four bridges of San Francisco – from the Golden Gate, past the Richmond-San Rafael and the Bay Bridge right down to the monster San Mateo.

Of course, you also see the Pacific, Alcatraz, Sausalito and the city of San Fran itself. And from this angle, looking down at the buildings, scattered over all the hills, is actually as fascinating as staring at the bridges themselves.

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Playing Peekaboo With The Golden Gate Bridge

A grubby lagoon and some fog, right? But that’s some very special fog there – because it’s fog that’s almost entirely blanketing the Golden Gate Bridge.

Yes, if you’re anything like us, you’ll have listened to San Franciscans moaning about the fog, warning you that you might not be able to see the Golden Gate Bridge on the date of your choosing, and thought, fog, schmog.

And then you’ll head out there and wonder where the bridge is.

Luckily for us, in this game of peekaboo that we had the week before last, the bridge decided to stick a bit of its arch out to let us at least know in which general direction it stood:

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Thanks to Hertz, Electric Car Sharing Arrives in San Francisco

We’ve got a soft spot for rental cars, and we’re especially fond of those that can do their thing without a drop of gas. That’s why we were excited to hear about Hertz and their latest plans to invade San Francisco with green types of rental transportation.

They’re using that new Hertz On Demand thing to offer up electric car rentals through a partnership with the San Francisco Airport Marriott Waterfront. So if you need to take a quick spin to watch some airplanes or head into the city for business, the people at Hertz and Marriott have you covered.

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'Planet Of The Apes' Puts San Francisco's Muir Woods Back on the Map

The Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes opened in theaters just two weeks ago, but already one of the movie's featured locations has seen an increase in visitors, thanks to the film. The movie didn't actually spend any time filming at the Muir Woods National Monument but producers did use photos to recreate the park for a scene in which the apes run across the Golden Gate Bridge and escape to Muir Woods.

The scene is apparently making quite an impression on audiences since the park is seeing more than 5,000 visitors a day, the most they've had in more than two years.

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