My brother and his wife are heading to Seattle from the 28th to the 31st before touring some national parks and then on down to San Francisco. He is trying to plan some specific events (eg San Francisco Brews on the Bay) so anyone got any thoughts?

Whenever I'm in Seattle, I always make a pilgrimage to PIroshky Piroshky. Their "salmon pate piroshky" is heavenly good.

I don't have any specific San Francisco food advice except to get across the Bay to Berkeley, where there's all kinds of good/cheap food. I could write pages of places to eat in Berkeley.

In terms of national park action, Muir Woods is just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. Nice light day hikes, but very dense with tourists. There are no lack of other great parks, from Big Basin Park, near Santa Cruz, through biggies like Yosemite or Sequoia.

The location that I always tell Seattle visitors to go is the Ballard Locks (technically the Hiram M. Chittenden locks). It includes a botanical garden, very active ship locks, and a salmon ladder with an underwater viewing area.

Thanks guys - have fed those ideas on to Kieron.

Rory

I would also be interested in things to do in SF. I'll be there in the second half of October.

A big question for me: does anyone know if a nice, inexpensive place to stay in the Sonoma area?

My wife and I stayed years ago at the Farmhouse Inn near Sonoma. It ain't cheap, but it also isn't crazy stupid expensive. And the restaurant there was out-of-this-world good without spending scandalous money.

I have been here 20-plus years but have never managed to have dinner at Canlis. If the weather is good and they are romantically-inclined, this could be a good bet. They need only make reservations, meet me for hors d'œuvre, give me a glass of red wine, push me into the back of a taxi, and then Canlis is all theirs. Do they feel lucky?

Yeah...$600 a night is, sadly, waaaay out of my range

My wife and I are at the "cheap" side of things at the moment!

We had one of the low-end rooms, so it's more like $325/night, but yeah, it's probably not what you've got in mind.

No problem, and that would have been closer, but presumably they were out of those rooms for the dates I searched for, since all I got was $600 and $700 rooms

Don't miss Mount Rainier National Park on the way down from Seattle. It's much easier to visit than Olympic as it has better road access. Olympic is out of the way and hard to see the best parts of unless your friends are backcountry hikers.