Greetings all,

Well I know it’s many months away, but Jason, Adrian, and I would like to extend an early invitation to you all. We would like to have some of your company for our now yearly San Francisco trip to Whiskies of the World Expo (http://www.celticmalts.com/events.asp?page=2) this upcoming year. It will be held March 28th -29th with the grand tasting again being held Saturday on the San Francisco Belle docked at pier 3. There will be seminars and “Whisky University” on Friday. We’ll be painting the town all shades of Plaid when ever we get the chance to do so, so make sure you sleep well before you come. We will, I’m sure, also make our yearly pilgrimage down to the wharf to visit Lark In the Morning (http://larkinthemorning.com/) for all our period music needs and to get our annual early morning Irish Coffee at The Mermaid pub near by. You’ll likely also get the chance to make fun of Seamus as that seems to happen a lot in SF, just ask any cabby or bar tender in the town.

Now it is too early to book rooms (wait till November) but so you can plan well in advance, our hotel of choice once again is going to be the Hotel Des Arts (http://www.sfhoteldesarts.com/index.php). This is an awesome little boutique hotel right at the intersection of China Town (weird shopping), the Mission District (Shopping) and the financial district (ATMs). Most of the rooms have been done up by local pop artists (Not Lichtenstein though) and each is very different. The rooms are a steal for the area as well with suites currently only going for around $160, Queen rooms for around $90 and for the more economically minded they even have European style wee rooms with out en-suite facilities that go for around $50 at night if memory serves. The shared bathrooms were actually pretty nice (I checked them out last year just out of curiosity.) The prices for next year have not been set yet so there will likely be some increase but you should be able to get the idea from current pricing. The three of us, depending on whether or not Jean and or Maggs come along, were anticipating sharing a suite this time around. The Hotel itself is great, but the most important part is this it is literally across the alley from the Irish Bank, our favorite and official pub while we are in SF. They love us there and we them (It’s kind of scary to think that I’m considered a regular in a pub hundreds of miles from my home.) There is a trade off for the real cheap prices and that is that the rooms tend to be a bit wee, but that is well offset by the Irish Bank so no worries there. The hotel is also only 1.1 miles from Pier 3 so that’ll be well withing stumbling distance if need be, and times being what they are.

Well that’s about it for now. I’ll be prompting you all again in November when the room bookings are available and the like but if you can, please plan ahead. This is bound to be a great trip and not one to miss if you at all like Whiskies.

YiS,
Raz