Once a hub for busy commuters, the city’s Ferry Building is now a haven for foodies. On a busy Saturday, the place is packed with goodies, and people eager to look, sample and buy.

The Ferry Building, that long, tall landmark where Market Street meets the Embarcadero, is where they brought the injured after the great San Francisco quake of 1906. It’s the hub that drew as many as 50,000 commuters daily across the bay before there were any big bridges here, then sent them back across the water at day’s end. It’s the monument that a freeway amputated from the rest of the city in the 1950s, its clock tower left to jut into the fog like a forgotten gravestone.

English writer Peter Mayle may have shined a light on them, but the cities nestled in the Luberon Mountain region are treasures.

Some people say it served Peter Mayle right when a fan tracked him down in Provence and walked into his sitting room uninvited. The English writer’s books — “A Year in Provence” (1991), “Toujours Provence” (1992), “Encore Provence” (2000) and “Provence A-Z” (2006) — turned the village of Ménerbes and the beguiling Luberon Mountain region around it into tourist central, complete with crowds and souvenir shops. For a while Mayle’s Ménerbes must have seemed almost as overrun as the Italian hill town of Cortona, visited by hordes since it served as the setting for bestselling author Frances Mayes’ “Under the Tuscan Sun” (1997).

The reserve is devoted to organic, insect-friendly, sustainable gardening using homemade compost.

Trillium, goldenstar, five spot, wild bleeding heart.

Three young firecrackers are enthralled by the California Academy of Sciences’ rain-forest exhibit, while it’s candy, candy, candy at the Pez museum.

I’ve witnessed spontaneous combustion.

Discounts, stateroom upgrades and shipboard credits are offered by cruise brands, even at the high end.

Buffeted by recessionary winds and swine flu fears, cruise lines are trying to entice passengers with prices and perks rarely seen in recent years: discounts off brochure prices of 70% or more, stateroom upgrades and hundreds of dollars in shipboard credits. And the cuts are in a range of cruise brands, from the modest to the high-end lines.

The country hopes the program brings back travelers, who’ve stayed away because of the swine flu, recession and violence.

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If you go NAVIGATING S.F. Ferries: Five ferry companies run boats from the Ferry Building, connecting to Sausalito and Larkspur (which take you near the Golden Gate Bridge); Oakland and Alameda (which take you under the Bay Bridge); Angel Island State Park and Vallejo. Except for the $13 Vallejo ride, most fares are less than $10 for an adult one-way. For list of ferry services with links: www.watertransit.org .

NAPA, CALIF.