Sonoma County

My excuse for not writing last week is: I was working. Yes, it's crunch time at work, and several of us have been working well into the evening lately (and into the wee hours of the morning in a few cases). I've been slammed less than some, but I still worked a few evenings to reach some milestones I really needed to reach last week. The good news is: I got there, so good progress has been made. More to come this week, I hope!

On the plus side, I did get several free dinners out of the deal. On the minus side, I ate too much, and my weight loss plan has been stalled for the past week. Ah, well.

So I'm still playing catch-up. Tonight I'll tell you all about our trip up to Sonoma County last weekend.

It was actually an anniversary thing; Debbi and I have been dating for two years, as of April 30. So we went out to dinner that night, and Saturday we drove up to Sonoma. It took maybe a little less than two hours to get there, and we promptly stopped at the Viansa winery, which had been recommended to us. We enjoyed their wines quite a bit, and also their very large gift shop, where we samples many wares and ended up picking up some yummy chocolate and an herb dip (as well as some wine). Mmm.

We stayed here:

Debbi has a cow-orker and he and his partner built this lovely house in rural Sonoma, and invited us up. It's really a lovely house, apparently it's been featured in magazines, etc. It's huge. They have three friendly dogs, and made us feel very much at home. They also have one of these:

Landscape? Patio? No, hot tub and pool! They went off to a party in the evening and left us a great bottle of port and instructions on how to run the hot tub, so we spent the evening there. It was great. Nearly pitch black except for a few lights from the house and the lights in the pool.

The house is filled with a wide variety of wood finishes, and matching furniture. It's clearly a house very much for show, which as a guest I appreciated even if it's pretty far from what I'd build for myself in a similar situation (wot, no bookcases?). A cool A/V room complete with large fish tank. And great views from every angle.

We spent Saturday afternoon driving around to nearby wineries, and then drove into downtown Sonoma and walked around. On our perambulations we saw this wacky car:

I don't really have much to add to that picture.

Downtown Sonoma is actually a bustling little downtown with many quaint shops. Of particular note is a shop selling stone-carved art, as well as gems, interesting rocks, and even a few fossils. And, I bought an Indian-style blanket (I'm never sure if they're genuine or not, but it's the style and feel, not the genuineness, which interests me) since I've been looking for one for a while. Debbi took me into may jewelry stores, which was fine.

We had a very nice dinner at the Plaza Bistro in downtown Sonoma. Debbi got a chicken dish, and I got an especially tasty dish of pork shank stuffed with dried fruits with potatoes and veggies. Their whole menu was fairly interesting, and I'd recommend them if you're in the area. We got reservations, but though they were far from empty they didn't seem slammed.

Sunday morning our hosts made us a very tasty french toast breakfast, and then they headed off on some errands, while we kicked back and relaxed, as well as tromped around to take photos of their house (mainly for our own memories, although we've been invited to stay with them if we're up there in the future).

Then we drove across the county to Sevastopol where we met up with my friend John and his girlfriend Kate, who lives up there. John's been badgering me to come visit them for a year or more, and it was worth the wait. Screaming Mimi's ice cream parlor is noteworthy for its variety and ambience. Apparently Sevastopol is home to many former hippies, and Mimi's bright, chaotic decor is a testament to this.

Kate works for the Rodney Strong Vineyards, where we went after lunch and ice cream. We went on the tour, and in fact were the only one on our tour - apparently the place got very quiet early in the afternoon, perhaps due to intermittent rain. We got to see the inside of the big warehouse where the barrels of wine are stored. Unfortunately neither Debbi nor I thought to get a photo of it! We did, however, get to taste some wine directly from the barrels, perhaps 6 months away from being bottled. Very cool!

I think our only disappointment with Rodney Strong is that their wines are all quite dry, whereas Debbi and I both prefer sweeter wines. We did pick up one, however, and Kate gave us another one. Our suspicion is that we'll probably enjoy them more with food, whereas we can drink sweet wines on their own.

We wrapped up the trip with dinner at another good restaurant, whose name I forget, but which my Dad might enjoy since John ordered a dozen oysters as part of his. Even their hamburgers were quite large and good - definitely more of a steak taste than the expected hamburger one!

Oh, and we did go to Kate's and met her four cats. Her cat Nibbin, who has the rep of being a holy terror towards guests, actually came up to me and sniffed me on his own, and let me pet him (except when I was near his food dish). Not such a meanie after all!

The drive home felt rather long, but we made it back okay and missed all of the end-of-weekend traffic slowdowns (even driving through San Francisco).

So it was a great weekend and we had a lot of fun from start to finish. We'll have to go back sometime!