A perfect NorCal Day

After living in northern California for five years, I haven't been back since I left, except for a short weekend trip when TD graduated. I have such wonderful memories of that time and place, so during our trip to the Bay area and Sea Ranch I was looking for a quintessential Northern California experience on Sunday, our last travel day. I really wanted to pack in all of that Bay Area - Sonoma - Mendocino goodness into our very short trip.

But what would the quintessential Northern California experience be? Hog Island Oysters at Bodega Bay? Cheeseboard Pizza or Chez Panisse Cafe in Berkeley's Gourmet Ghetto? Eating pastries from Tartine while hanging out in Dolores Park? Wandering Golden Gate Park and visiting the de Young Museum?



I wasn't sure, and spent the weekend asking friends what they thought we should do. However, I should have known that the perfect Northern California experience sometimes finds you - sometimes when you are driving down Highway 1 and everyone is feeling either famished or terribly car sick, you might stop at the first sign of civilization and it just might happen to be next to a delightful coffee shop, that just happens to serve chowder and breakfast all day, and it just might be next to the water, and there might be an awesome bluegrass band playing while the fog rolls in. And that, my friends is the quintessential NorCal experience (at least for me).

Enjoy!

Gualala Arts Center Reception

Gualala Wedding Reception, a set on Flickr.

After the lovely ceremony, T & M had a magical reception at the Gualala Arts Center, complete with heartfelt toasts, delicious food & wine, and lots and lots of dancing.

The party even continued into the wee hours of the morning but thankfully no pictures were taken at that point.

Sea Ranch Wedding

Our friends had a beautiful (did I mention NO FOG!) afternoon wedding on the bluff below the Sea Ranch Lodge. They had a beautiful ceremony with two dear friends officiating, and a another friend singing. Lovely and a perfect expression of the two of them.

Sea Ranch and the Mendonoma Coast

We had an awesome weekend trip for our dear friends' wedding at Sea Ranch on the Mendocino-Sonoma Coast. We weren't sure what to expect of this planned vacation community about 3 hours north of San Francisco - but it was gorgeous and we had a blast!

We had a long day of plane - train - car travel on Friday which culminated with us hurriedly changing into our rehearsal dinner garb in the parking lot since we were already half an hour late. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of our delicious dinner since we left the camera in the car, but I did have a life changing avocado brulee - avocado with caramelized sugar on top - wow! We also got to chat with lots of grad school friends that we (or at least I) hadn't seen since our wedding, so it was a great reunion. And we even made it to the house that we had rented with our friends J & K, without directions or an address, in time to sit in the hot tub.

On Saturday we were up early to enjoy the beautiful weather (NO FOG!!) with a hike at the regional park. The park is located on the Gualala River, so we got great views of the ocean as well as the river.

NYC!

I had a great time visiting my friend A two weekends ago in New York. She is the consummate hostess with the mostess and despite being six months pregnant & her husband getting hit by a car (!!!) the day I arrived (he got checked out in the ER but was ok), she was a lovely tour guide per usual. I was only in town for 48 hours, but we packed it in!

The view from her apt - Queensboro Bridge & Roosevelt Island

Taking the ferry to Brooklyn - A beautiful way to travel

Smorgasburg - a food fair in Williamsburg. We enjoyed truffle lumpia (Philippine eggs rolls), Saltenas (bolivian empanada with chicken, hardboiled egg and raisins), People's Pops (plum spearmint popsicle), and iced Blue Bottle Coffee. yum!

We wandered over to the deKalb market and checked out lots of jewelry, crafts and clothes (may have gotten a few birthday gifts here). The market is made entirely of stacked shipping containers - very cool.

After DeKalb we wandered to Flatbush where we stopped at several stores along the way to Franny's pizza. We got there fashionably early and got to sit at the bar. The food was excellent - eggplant agrodolce and squid to start and we split the meatball, buffalo mozzarella pizza - thin chewy, crispy crust, tart sauce, salty cheese. yum!

Gorgeous day on Sunday

Sunday morning French Toast Orgy inspired by Kate's Kitchen in SF - Challah French toast topped with bananas, blueberries, black berries, homemade yogurt and granola

We walked to the oh so cool rooftop installation at the Met - Tomas Saraceno's Cloud City. It reminded me of a spaceship, honey comb, bubbles. You could even climb inside and walk around.

Sadly, the only picture I got of the two of us. 

We also checked out the excellent Modern art collection - Specifically the collections of the New York School (deKooning, Noguchi, Calder, Warhol, Jasper Johns, Pollock). I love how all of these greats are together - less overwhelming than the MoMA.

We weren't really hungry yet, but I had specifically requested Ramen, so we headed to Ippudo. (Our first choice Totto Ramen didn't open til 4 pm)

I got the delicious Tori Ramen (chicken broth) with slices of Pork Loin. 

A chose the special with Squid Ink noodles in spicy broth. 

We had to stop at il labrotorio del gelato - an amazing place that really does look like a laboratory. They have incredible flavors like tomato, olive oil, black pepper, lemon rosemary, etc. I had a scoop of Grapefruit Campari sorbet and a scoop of Red Grape sorbet. The concentration of flavor in both were incredible. They are obviously working some magic back in the lab!

We then wandered over to china town so that I could buy 100 handmade dumplings to bring back home. This time I got pork and chive as well as vegetarian stuffed with bok choy. 

A also did her grocery shopping for the week - very fun to visit some of the huge meat markets and listen to her ask for things in Cantonese.

Too soon it was time to head back to the airport where this awaited me - c'mon JFK can't you get it together? 

These are tarps with garden hoses to drain the water from the gaping holes in the ceiling. Not pictured is the mass of humanity in the Delta terminal resulting from 3 canceled flights and 5 flights leaving from the same gate in the span of an hour. Needless to say, I was just thankful that my flight was not canceled, that I got on the correct plane and that I brought yummy snacks. 

Such a fun weekend  & I can't wait to return next year to meet the Bebe!

Petroglyphs

Continuing on the theme of things I haven't ever done in ABQ, we spent Sunday morning exploring the Petroglyph National Monument.

We wanted to go somewhere where we would have a chance of seeing some wildlife, but given the cooler weather, we weren't sure if anything would be out and about. We decided to check out the petroglyphs, so that we would be sure to see something cool even if the animals weren't out.

 The trail we were on goes up a valley rimmed with volcanic rocks. While we were scrambling over the rocks, a family down below found a large bull snake. TD went to see & caught it so they could see it.

 She was very calm.

 While TD was playing snake handler, look what I found - a western diamondback.

 Some of the glyphs were very elaborate like this warrior with a headdress.

 My favorite were the animal shapes like these birds, snakes & turtles

 Deer? Armadillo?

We saw another bull snake on our way out. The trail we did was a nice 1.5 miles out and back which took us about 2 hours poking along. And we were happy we didn't choose to ride the skyrail to Sandia Peak as the mountains were stormy all morning.