Shopping, Dining and A Really Fun Weekend

Sorry for the long absence. After a crazy summer of promoting Lust, Loathing And A Little Lip Gloss, writing Vows, Vendetta's And A Little Black Dress and recovering from a break-up I just needed a little respite.

But I DID want to tell you about Labor Day Weekend with Daneen. For those of you who don't know, Sophie won my Lust Loathing And A Little Lip Gloss contest and got a free Labor Day weekend trip to San Francisco.

I hesitate to call Daneen fabulous because it's a word I frequently throw around too casually. I don't want to use the same term to describe Daneen as I used to describe my most recent shoe purchase. But the thing is while my shoes could easily be described as cool or cute there is simply no better word to describe Daneen than...well, fabulous. What else would you call a woman who manages to balance a career working for a very prominent non-profit company that works to fight cancer with managing her very own extraordinarily successful blog-site (Spoiledpretty.com) about beauty products and always receives back-stage passes for New York Fashion Weeks? Name any A-list celebrity and she's probably on a first name basis with her make-up artist. And the girl knows how to shop! She introduced me to fashion sites and "great finds" that I would never have found on my own!

So anyway, I started our weekend by taking her to Coit Tower (the place where Sophie and Anatoly shared their first kiss). It's been forever since I've been on top of the tower (psst, city planners, the tower's a major monument, you think you could trim the hedges that surround it?!). But hedges aside the view from the tower was wonderful and we had a lot of fun.

Max's Opera Cafe (where Sophie dined in Obsession Deceit And A Really Dark Chocolate) was fantastic. The service was good and the food...well, the food is always awesome at Max's so that was a given. We ended the night in North Beach where we discovered new cocktails together.

The next day we went to Zazzie for breakfast (you'll remember that Sophie ate there with murder-suspect Maria in Lust, Loathing). If you haven't eaten at Zazzie you are seriously missing out. Yes, there's bound to be a long wait but it's definitely worth it. The food is exquisite and they have at least 5 or 6 different kinds of mimosas (try the Sunshine Mimosa!). Then it was off to the the Botanical Gardens where I took her to the "Bitches Circle" where Sophie discovered her first dead body. We hung out there for a while until the mosquitoes started attacking and then we drove over to the coast to explore Sutro Heights (where Sophie had her infamous confrontation with Kane). Sutro Heights is just so beautiful, it's impossible not to become enchanted as you stand up on the cliff looking down at the endless ocean. We did some more site seeing and then it was time to shop!

I took her to CocoaBella Chocolates where we were treated like VIPs and Daneen was given a tour and her own little box of hand selected chocolates. Then at my insistence we went to Sephora. I mean, come on, if you were with one of the country's top beauty bloggers wouldn't you want to go to Seophora with her too? She introduced me to Kim Kardashian's favorite mascara (Danneen is very close to Kim's make-up artist) Lancôme's Hypnose Drama, Benefit's truly magical concealer, Erase Paste, and the best hair product I've ever used, Joico Curl Definer. Clearly this was the part of the trip where she was the one in charge and I was her very eager student.

But then I put my tour-guide hat back on and took her to Restaurant Lulu (where Sophie and Marcus lunched in Sex, Murder And A Double Latte) which was AMAZING! I've been there more times than I can count but the food is always incredible and the service literally just gets better and better and that's saying something. Oh, and did I mention the truly spectacular wine list? Next time you're in San Francisco you must check it out. And be sure to get the mussels!

Unfortunately that's all we had time for during our short weekend but I hope to have the chance to hang out with Daneen again sometime.

I honestly love my readers. I have yet to meet a Sophie fan I didn't really enjoy taking to. Daneen was obviously no exception to that rule.


Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Murder Mystery Series,
and
SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING
Order LUST, LOATHING AND A LITTLE LIP GLOSS on Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com today!