Yesterday we packed up the car and headed up to Northern California to visit our friends Melissa and Ron.  Today we all spent a beautiful sunny afternoon on the patio at the Moss Beach Distillery.  If you happen to be near San Francisco, make sure to stop at the Distillery.  The restaurant is perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  I’ve never eaten in the restaurant, because I prefer the oceanside patio which has food service (clam chowder, sliders, fish tacos, steamers, calamari etc.), fire pits and cozy wool blankets.  Literally, you can curl up with your significant other in a blanket in front of a blazing fire, drink wine (they also have fabulous bloody marys) and watch the sea.  It is wonderfully romantic, even for lunch.  The patio is dog friendly too!   The restaurant, built by Frank Torres in 1927, used to be a very popular speakeasy / restaurant called “Franks’ Place” during Prohibition.  It was frequented by silent film stars, writers (mystery writer Dashiell Hammett was a patron and used Frank’s Place as a setting for one of his stories) and politicians from San Francisco.  The restaurant’s location, on a cliff overlooking a secluded beach, was the perfect drop off point for illegal whiskey from Canada.   The whiskey was brought up from the beach and loaded into trucks for transport to San Francisco.   Naturally, Torres made sure that some of the whiskey was brought into Frank’s Place.   Torres’ whiskey stash gave him social and political clout enabling him to run a successful, illegal business.  Case in point, his speakeasy was never raided.  Once Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Frank’s Place remained a popular dining destination.   During our visit to the Distillery we were told that there is a resident ghost, called the Blue Lady.  I didn’t see any spirits (other than in my bloody mary) but some people have reported (including NBC TV series Unsolved Mysteries) seeing a ghost all dressed in blue.