Triangle Trip

I highly recommend two sushi restaurants in San Francisco’s Union Square area.  No big fancy, upscale restaurants where they overcharge for mediocre sushi.  In fact these two places are relatively close to each other in Nob Hill (a few blocks from Union Square).  I am a frequent visitor of these places when I want quality and fresh nigiri or sashimi.

1) Ryoko’s Japanese Restaurant – This place is hard to see, with two doors which immediately leads down stairs to the restaurant.  Ryoko’s is located on Taylor near Post. Portions isn’t very large, but the sushi quality is great.  First good sign upon entering is Japanese people run this Ryoko’s.  They know what they are talking about when they make suggestions about sushi.  They always have sushi and sashimi specials which they import in from Japan.

The fish at Ryoko’s is great. I don’t know if its just the freshness or quality, or the way the chefs cut the fish.  It just melts in your mouth.  Albacore and Himachi are my favorite which I always get, but if they have toro available, I’m going to get it.  And if you bring your non raw fish eating friends, don’t worry the rolls here are excellent as well.  Ryoko’s have a a lot of different rolls, and my personal favorite is the spider roll.  The crab is fried to perfection and not mushy like other places.

Ryoko’s menu is quite extensive, from appetizers and salads to entres, sashimi and rolls, modern and traditional.  We always get the salmon rice balls, delicious!

On weekend nights, Ryoko’s have a DJ who plays music, so the place will loud. Don’t expect fine dining, but more of a hip and trendy sushi restaurant. The downside is this place only opens for dinner, but the upside it opens until 2am.  Late night eaters, and party goers, come eat at Ryoko’s before you go out.

2. Sakana – Sakana is a small casual restaurant.  I come here to eat with my roommates, or friends when we want to relax.  The fish quality here is amazing, and the selection of sushi is outstanding.  Alongside Sakana’s menu, they have a specials of all sorts of weird things I never see in normal sushi restaurants.

When I come to Sakana, I come for the sushi, no rolls, no noodles, no teriyaki.  This place is for some high quality and variety of sushi.  When I have a sushi craving, I come here, and my stomach is completely satisified.

Continuing its generosity, Starwood (SPG) is offering free weekend nights for every two stays at their hotels. You can redeem weekend nights (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) right after you have earned them but I think you will need to redeem it before September. This is a great excuse to go on vacation! Here’s the preview link for more details on the offer. Note this offer is not live yet, you will need to revisit SPG’s site to register later this month.

SPG’s current 500 bonus points per night will end this month (April 30, 2009). This follow up offer starts on May 1 and ends July 31, 2009. The SPG offer is still better than Hilton’s 1,000 bonus point per night offer (see previous post). For the next three months (13 weeks), you can potentially earn 10+ free weekend nights if you stayed at a SPG property every week.

For the traveling rookies/novices, each hotel stay means each time you checkin to a hotel. If you have the stamina, you can checkin and out of the same hotel to accumulate more SPG free weekend nights. However there’s a catch. SPG and most other hotels would not give you credit for a stay if you checkin on consecutive nights at a single property. This means you cannot checkin at the San Francisco St. Francis on Monday night, check out on Tuesday morning and re-checkin Tuesday night. SPG will only award you two nights and one stay in the scenario described above.

So if you want to maximize your free weekend nights, we recommend you checkin and out of different SPG properties throughout the week — that’s if you have the stamina to do it 😉

Car rental companies are eliminating flexible one way car rental returns. Major car rental companies like Avis, Hertz and National used to treat a Metro area as one car rental facility. With corporate and leisure rates, customers used to be able to rent from one metro area and return to another – i.e., rent at SFO and return at SJO. As recent as January 2009, I rented a car from National at LAX and returned the car at SNA without penalty.

Since March of 2009, I began to realize the major car rental companies are charging their customers for returning to a different car rental facility. I was looking to rent a car from Hertz or National at Burbank airport and returning the car to LAX and noticed extra charges for dropping the car off at a different location. National Car Rental adds a drop off charge with unlimited miles while Hertz charges a standard daily rental rate plus $0.30 per mile.

There are however exceptions on the east coast. Due to the competitive nature of the one way rentals in the greater New York area, you can still get good rates when you rent from NYC and return it to New Jersey/Newark. I have also rented from downtown Philadelphia and returned the car to PHL without any penalties or extra mileage charge.

I recommend you read the fine print of the car rental quote before you commit to the contract. Flexible return policies are out the window in this tough economy.