 | 43 As a 1930s wife, I am |
You do not need to adjust the color of your monitor, nor did I touch up the photo...this is au natural. Really black soil. We were blessed with an entire yard full of it. It's so dark people have stopped in the street and asked us if they could buy our "black dirt" when we had large piles of it from landscaping projects (sorry, no, we use it for "fill").
*This history/geography lesson is thanks to Wikipedia.
As the vast majority of you know, I have a thing for Hawaii. I love it. Everything about it. It's heaven to me. Even CiBaby's room is decorated in the beach/Hawaii theme. Completely coincidentally (or not!), CiBaby became a U.S. citizen in Hawaii, as it was our entry point into the U.S. from China.
I have recently decided that I've been drinking too much caffeine. Coffee in the AM (a 4-cupper pot), a diet Coke or two in the early afternoon, plus a cup or two of tea in the late PM. Yeah, too much caffeine.
As I previously posted, there was an 8x10 picture of me roaming about the city in CiBaby's bag...just incase she needed to see Mom. I also watched movies with CiBaby and T-Daddy. No wonder I was so tired when I got home, I was living a double life!
Previously I stayed in the Cottage but this time I made my way up in the world (literally) and stayed in the Aerie (upper left door), a private
location reserved only for special guest (thanks Suzanne and Terry, it was wonderful!) I had my own apartment, which was very remminicient of our first, to myself, where I could leisurely eat huge bowls of fresh fruit without having to share, drink tea and do whatever I pleased...which included wandering the garden in the early morning.
Follow that up with a couple DELISH blood orange margarita's at Harry's Bar (on Fillmore) and dinner at Via Veneto...and you have one great evening!
Saturday we meandered on over to the Ferry Building and the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market (I'm always a sucker for farmer's markets)...and I say meandered since first we lost keys, then the parking places at BART with all of the bird poop, the ring stand waylaid us for quite some time and FINALLY we got to the market, all while having a great time. We found the most beautiful heirloom tomatoes and basil (which ended up being a HUGE part of our dinner, along with the outstanding Duckhorn wine), wonderful cherries and rose sugar (I'm going to come up with a martini to use it! I promise to post the recipe later). Starving, we had a yummy BLT at Lulu Petite and desert at Miette (Ker, we didn't see Al this time). And while a particular tourist (not moi, of course) was extremely rude at Miette's counter she did add a lot of colorful commentary and amusement to our weekend.
Time at the store is always detrimental to my pocketbook but oh so wonderful for the soul and stack of gifts to give! I'm not going to bore you (ha!) with the deets on all the products, but I was able to knock off Father's day, a graduation gift, some birthdays, misc and great things for CiBaby and myself, of course.
Sunday was filled with Dim Sum at Legendary Palace in Oakland and wandering through the markets. I wanted to pick up some lotus root to try and make T-Daddy's most favorite thing he had in China, but I wasn't sure how well it would travel, with me that is. There were a lot of really interesting ingredients there, some I recognized and have use, some I haven't. We had a bit of Peets, watch a great flick (Once, very cute), had wonderful wine, great conversation and great friends.
Monday we ventured on up to Napa Valley. We made a few quick stops but ultimately ended up in St. Helena. It is such a beautiful town. The car registered a mere 97F degrees...we feared all of my lovely chocolate would melt into an unrecognizable puddle before bringing it home and presenting it. As there is no such thing as having too much chocolate, we stopped at Woodhouse Chocolate and got some extremely decadent morsels. On to the Duckhorn Vineyard (pictured) for some sampling. I highly recommend the 2005 Duckhorn Vineyards Napa Valley Merlot and the 2005 Goldeneye Anderson Valley Pinot Noir, both superb flavor.
"San Francisco has only one drawback. ''Tis hard to leave"Rudyard Kipling
An exciting finish
As if the whole long weekend wasn't fun and exciting enough, our trip back into the city from Napa Valley took MUCH longer than we had anticipate. We raced under the Golden Gate bridge, through SF and made it to the airport JUST in time. I've done a lot of traveling in my time but never, ever have I gotten to the airport with only 25 minutes until departure. Thankfully it was a quiet time and I got through check-in and security in no time. It was a good thing I was wearing my running flip-flops.
Once we were in the air I was able to russel up some free wine for myself and one of my row mates from the very nice male flight attendant using my feminine wiles and my handy-dandy watermelon hair clip. We sipped Chardonnay and ate delicious chocolate. What an end to a great trip.
It was a wonderful trip, filled with memories I will treasure forever...and just what the doctor ordered. Thanks C and B! (and T-Daddy for organizing it)
Much love, XXXOOO .
