California Dreaming: Part 1 [August 10th, 2017]
/Stephan turned 40 this year.
Some years ago he officially declared to the household that for his 40th birthday he was going to go to The French Laundry and we were all welcome to come if we wanted to!
Seeing as that sounded SO TERRIBLE... the rest of us then colluded to make this happen.
The planning started in May and from there just set the road ahead for the four musketeers to make their way to the opposite coast... Below are portions of our adventure!
Nick and Tara made their way to Logan... well, early but maybe not quite bright yet seeing as the sun was rising up over route 1 as we crossed the Zakim... but not a terrible way to start a vacation... Sunrise on the east coast... here we come west coast for the riotous sunset! (We hoped!)
The day was that of travel followed by a meet-up at the airport (Stephan and Synda had a different flight plan) and then off to dinner at a near-to-the-airport churrascaria at which we took zero pictures (you'd think we were hungry...) and then back into the car for the trip out to our abode for the next several days...
I nearly missed the west coast sunset!
The arrival at and settlement into our AirBnB locale pretty much did us in for the evening since our bodies were still functioning on east coast time and we were quickly to bed which... somewhat unfortunately meant we were all up by between 4-5AM local time... but we plotted a bit... though, oddly not for breakfast until we were all settled in the car and then so began our California exploration of Napa and Sonoma Valley!
The majority of our breakfasts looked as such... again... we were all hungry and dug right in so... we have ONE picture :) But Good Day Cafe in Vallejo fed us quite well and we left there with full bellies and found ourselves in the car once again loosely deciding what we should do for a few hours since the majority of the vineyards and wineries didn't open until after 11!
We found our way into Napa after having sort of half charted a winery course and made our way to one of the only things open... Oxbow Public Market! Well THAT was a treat! Wandering around, seeing all the yummy foods and things to drink. We were MOSTLY not hungry but after about an hour we did settle in to the Oxbow Cheese & Wine Market and had ourselves a little shared plates of delicious cheesey (and wine and beer) yumminess!
As we were pretty much noshing on what were already mostly full bellies... it took us sufficient time to finish and then we set off to our first planned winery of the day! Domaine Carneros!
Across the street there was an interesting Art Gallery - Di Rosa, primarily sculpture and we thought we would take a look. We missed the guided tour but had some fun with self exploration in the gallery.
After leaving the art gallery we actually got locked in some bad traffic and took to adventuring. We ended up finding a Winery on a back road Waze pointed us on. We stopped in and after waiting for an opening we had a nice second tasting at Liana Estates - but we killed the time enjoying the views and a little bit of cornhole.
We were set for dinner that night so we took local advice and headed out to lunch at a place called Boon Fly Cafe. It was part of a local resort but had a great little menu for quick bites and some tasty cocktails. We didn't get too many photos but here is some of our food and a stock outdoor photo.
Afterwards we headed back, showered up and got ready for The French Laundry for Stephan's birthday. We had a great uber driver on the trip up there and a great time. The meat of that night deserves its own post though.
