Sadly, we’re not staying in a Holiday Inn, but we’ve got the hotel (last night – Red Lion) and motel (Travelodge) covered so far.  Nothing but the best for our honeymoon!

We’re gaining an understanding of just how different San Francisco (and Chicago, and Boston, and Tokyo . . .) is from just about everywhere else in the country, even elsewhere in Northern California.  For example, we got into Redding last night and thought we’d go for pizza – sounds simple enough, right?

The first place we visited had strong ratings on Yelp . . . and a pizza buffet that looked like it had been sitting out since our last day of work (which was now over a week ago).  After some additional Yelp research, we decided to go big by visiting the Upper Crust – reviews that said its prices were too high but we were willing to pay up if that meant good food and a decent atmosphere.  Turns out half of that was right – food was good, as long as we weren’t run over by screaming toddlers (at least a dozen of them) running back and forth to the video game room on our way to our table.  Breakfast at IHOP wasn’t much different.  But one thing Redding has going for it – everybody was extremely friendly, even if they drive ridiculous trucks (see below; more to come in an upcoming post) and eat 2000+ calories at every meal.