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Did the last eruption of the volcano in Iceland disrupt your travel plans? Our friends at Budget Travel offer some important advice to help you prepare if something like this happens again.

Go to the airport every day for the best shot at open seats…especially if you must get on a plane as soon as you can. The reason? There will be empty seats due to passengers missing connections. If you are at the airport, you may be able to take advantage of these.

Bring extra medications. If you are on a must have med, be sure to take extras with you.

Have a back up plan. Did you leave your pets with a friend or at a kennel? You need to call them. Is someone taking care of your house and assumes you will be home on a certain day? Call them, too.

Write down names and addresses of people you meet while traveling…especially those with whom you strike up a friendship. You may just be able to ask if you can rent their sofa for the night…and save some cash over the now higher priced hotels.

Good luck…

Fennel makes interesting and edible centerpieces.

Lunch at The Terraces Winery was spectacular…as usual.

Southern Italian fare combined with Terraces wine…what’s not to like?

Anybody know what these are?

I goofed and didn’t get a photo of the dessert before I ate it! You will always wonder what it was.

Next stage of growth in the vineyard…looking good.

Sundays by City Hall in San Francisco head to the Farmers Market. Vegetables picked early in the morning lay waiting for your dinner.

A kaleidoscope of flowers line the walkways…their scents mixing, their colors blending.

Wanting to take some home, my decision became harder the more I looked.

Exotic to…

elegant to…

a mixed blend…what ever should I buy?

This tangled woven together base is of a 100 year old Imperial Philodendron. A wide angle lens would have helped!

From the low land tropics area

colors and more colors

dripping with color

dancing with color

Steve Silver’s Beach Blanket Babylon, the longest running musical revue in theatre history, even has it’s own street sign. And worthy of more than just a street sign, this musical has performed to sold out audiences over 12,000 times.

Be prepared to laugh until your jaw hurts…to sing along with songs you just thought you knew…to watch the famous and infamous as you’ve never seen them before…to stare in amazement at those hats…those crazy HUGE hats.

No headline nor headliner is safe from this stage. Everyone from Tiger Woods (yes even his latest escapades) to Michael Jackson to Sarah Palin to Elvis to Oprah to the Jonas Brothers to the Obama’s to…the list goes on and on. And you just can’t quit laughing.

You walk out the door, still grinning and laughing to yourself at something you just remembered about the show. Then you think about those hats. How do they do that?

Stepping inside San Francisco’s Conservatory of Flowers is more than stepping into the Victoria-era building. Built in 1879, surviving the 1906 earthquake, lasting through numerous fires and the 1995 windstorms…the Conservatory is now an endangered monument.

Numerous galleries, all with native plants, await your journey. Smells overwhelm you as you linger in the Lowland Tropics.

So humid my lens kept fogging over…yet strangely realistic as your eyes seem to fog over the exact same way! More like a perfumed sauna complete with flowers at our beck and call, this area engulfed us in a blanket of warm moist air.

Orchids cling to tree bark, splendid in their colorful arrangements. Notice the drops of water on each petal.

Strange plants and trees reside in yet another part of the Conservatory. Spikes on this one really were sharp, begging to be touched.

More to come…

No your screen isn’t fuzzy…just wanted to showcase the wine

Here’s what we were drinking…my daughter-in-law will be jealous. But I drank some for her.

Flowers in full bloom in Napa today

Wisteria just begging the bees to buzz

Canopy of wisteria overhead

When you travel do you register for “loyalty points”, frequent flyer miles, etc.? If not, you should. They can add up to some decent hotel or rental car savings, upgrades, and even free nights’ stays. Frequent flyer miles add up, sometimes quickly, to free tickets.

Now that you’re registered, how do you keep track of them? Recently I came across a website that may be useful when managing those points. It doesn’t have all the airlines, hotels and car rentals yet but they seem to be working on that. You can even share, trade, or buy points. It’s worth looking at and it’s free to join.

Check out www.points.com. It may work for you.