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Golden Gate Bridge

America’s biggest annual sporting event takes place a little more than two weeks from now in the San Francisco Bay Area. Yes, the World Cup will be there in the summer, but I’m talking about an annual event, the National Football League’s Super Bowl. The big game, Super Bowl LX if you want to be precise about it, or if you just love Roman numerals, will be held at Levi’s Stadium in suburban Santa Clara on Sunday Feb. 8. The city of San Francisco hosts the yearly Super Bowl Experience for fans at the Moscone Center from Feb. 3 to Read more

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SAN FRANCISCO – The walk-in gingerbread house at the Fairmont Hotel was a big hit. Likewise the barking sea lions at Pier 39. But the thing that our almost-four-year-old grandson loved the most about his first-ever visit to San Francisco was the same thing as many visitors; the cable cars. As someone who grew up a half-hour from the city, I have been in San Francisco hundreds of times. But yesterday marked only the second time I had visited with a grandchild, and the first time with one who could walk and talk and understand what they were looking at Read more

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It’s a great matchup on paper, with the NFL’s top quarterback (Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs, a number 10 draft pick) against San Francisco 49ers signal caller Brock Purdy, a kid taken last in the NFL draft in 2022, 262nd overall. It’s also a fun matchup of cities that are quite unalike; one smack dab in the middle of the American heartland and solid as Midwestern rock; the other perched on the edge of the continent and known for its breezy, live for today attitude. Here’s a look at the two cities. Full disclosure: I grew up in Read more

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U.S. News and World Report has come out with a list of the top 25 hotels in Canada. It’s a pretty good one, but a couple of things leave me curious. The publication put the Rosewood Hotel Georgia in Vancouver, B.C., at the top of the list, which is quite reasonable. It’s a gorgeous hotel with massive rooms, beautiful bathrooms, and lovely, historic touches all around. The next four were  the Ritz Carlton, Montreal, 1Hotel Toronto, The Hazelton Hotel in Toronto and The Four Seasons Whistler. I quite like the 1Hotel Toronto, which has a very cool lobby bar and Read more

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We all want to save a buck. Or three. With that in mind, the folks at gobankingrates.com have put together lists of the 10 cheapest and 10 most expensive cities to visit in the U.S. I’m quite familiar with many of them and have some thoughts of my own, so I’m offering three free things to do in some of the most expensive cities. And, just for fun, free things to do in the cheapest cities so you can REALLY save. We’ll start with the most expensive on the list. In order, from most expensive on down, were New York Read more

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