California Trip Days Three and Four: Wine and Food

My goal for the night it to finish writing about at least three more days. We'll see how well that goes.

Sunday
Sunday was way better for Adrian and I than it was for our hosts. Rob got food poisoning at the wedding they attended, and let me tell you, it didn't sound pretty!

I don't have pictures really from Sunday, so it's going to be harder to remember the day. We spent the day in Napa Valley. We started by touring Sterling Vineyards. Adrian and I met his sister (Shannon), her boyfriend (Luke), his uncle (Bruce), and his aunt (Betty) there. I have to admit I was totally intimidated to meet that much family after only dating the boy for two weeks. Adrian didn't believe me when I told him I'd be shy when I met his family, but I totally proved myself right. (Unfortunately for me I think that's only like the second time I've been right about anything when we disagree... Urg, I hate being wrong.) Besides the wine, the coolest thing about the vineyard was that there is a tram that takes you up the side of the mountain. That was fun. The wine really good. I'm not good at describing what I like about different wines. Most of the time I just laugh when people get talking describing it, because it reminds me of my parents comparing sweet corn. Sweet corn all tastes the same!

After Sterling we went to a winery in a castle, Castello de Amorosa. While having a little lunch out in the parking lot (salami, cheese, and crackers, yum), Adrian's uncle decided he didn't need to hold back his comments around me any more. Basically, he asked me if was true that I left a perfectly good relationship to be with his nephew. What was I supposed to say to that?!? Adrian just cracked up and ran away, so I got to take the heat all by myself. I was pretty embarrassed, but it was actually pretty funny. The castle was entertaining enough, despite the bad tourguide we had (apparently the VP should NOT give tours).

We went to one more winery to have champagne, then we left Bruce and Betty and the four of us went to the Culinary Institute of America for dinner. The food wasn't as amazing as we hoped, but the duck I ordered was really good. Most entirely disappointing was the chocolate soufflé we had for dessert. Seriously, how can you make a bad dessert? out of chocolate no less...

That's really about all I remember from the day. I enjoyed meeting Adrian's family. Family always seems to explain a lot about who a person is.

Monday
Monday morning was pretty relaxed for me. Adrian went to Opus One, another winery, to pick up a case of wine for his parents. I didn't go, but he got some pretty great pictures of the place. I spent the morning planning a trip to San Francisco. I really didn't have a clue what should be seen beyond the Golden Gate Bridge. When Adrian got back with the wine, we spent a little more time at Rob and Nicole's so he could hold his god-daughter Sydney. Nicole told me how impressed she was that Adrian isn't scared of babies like most boys. He was pretty cute with that beautiful little girl.

It wasn't a very long drive down to San Francisco, so we got there early afternoon. We stopped right before the Golden Gate Bridge to get some amazing pictures with the city in the background. I was intrigued by how red the bridge looked. It didn't look very "international orange" to me. For some reason in goes back to looking orange in the pictures we took. Color is an interesting phenomenon.

When we got into the city, we went and checked out Lombard Street (a crazy steep switch backed road right in the middle of the city). Then, we walked down to Fisherman's Wharf, and found a place for Adrian to get clam-chowder in a sourdough breadbowl. Apparently wasn't as good as in Crescent City. I still don't really do seafood (the Midwesterner in me), but I tried it and didn't feel the urge to be sick, so it was at least edible.

Next, we checked out Pier 39 where these crazy sealions have taken over some of the docks. They were really noisy and they fought a lot with each other. It was thoroughly entertaining. Adrian and I almost stopped for a rematch of air hockey. He clearly was too scared that I would win again though, so we didn't. (I'm really good at air hockey, apparently especially so when slightly intoxicated). The last part of walking along the Pier was mostly just the two of us trying to resist stopping to get some sort of dessert. It was pretty difficult, especially after the Ghirardelli Chocolate store.

After that we just sort of walked around down by the waterfront. Some crazy dude on the sidewalk disguised as a bush scared me half to death when he started shaking it right when I walked by. Totally didn't see him. Adrian found it really damn funny. I did not. I don't like being scared, makes me feel weak. I prefer the illusion of feeling invincible.

We made it about 6 blocks or something after the pier and then we walked up to a Cold Stone. Adrian totally caved and we got ice cream. (I was really hoping he'd give in.) If I had a Cold Stone within walking distance, I might actually finally weigh more than I did in 6th grade.

We had a little more time to blow in the city before we headed to Bruce and Betty's for dinner, so we drove around some. We ended up finding this little tower, called Coit Tower and paying $4 to take the elevator to the top. It had decent views and the day was clear. You could see the fog just starting to roll in over the Golden Gate Bridge.

Dinner with Bruce and Betty was really good. Bruce made some amazingly tasty burgers that just about made your heart stop. We opened up one of the bottles of wine from Sterling, the Three Palms Merlot. It was insanely good, but unfortunately we still had to drive to Yosemite that night so consumption was limited. I met Adrian's cousin, I think his name was Dan. Bruce was fairly well behaved, except for the point when he started talking about me to Adrian's dad over speakerphone. Awkward.

Adrian drove us to our hotel just outside Yosemite. We had some serious issues finding the hotel. It was in this tiny little town, you wouldn't think it'd be so hard. It was late and everything was closed so it was hard to find people to ask. After at least 30 minutes of driving around aimlessly, we finally found out it was right behind the building where we stopped for directions the first time. Even if the guy was new to town like he said, he should have known it was right behind him. Arg. Most impressively, neither Adrian or I got cranky with the other during the whole ordeal. Very nice.

Ok, that's the end of days three and four and my laptop is about to die, so day five will have to wait.