Vino and Visitors

Ok, so rewind to a bit over a week ago.  Megan and Kendra came to visit!  They were our first visitors.  I met them in the city on Thursday morning.  We walked around Union Square and had some Dim Sum for lunch.  I worked for the rest of the afternoon in their hotel room so that I could be ready to go as soon as I was off the clock.  Our first stop: China Town!  After downing lots of Starbucks, we looked around at the cool architecture and the stores that were packed with slippers, karma sutra books, and jade jewelry.  Megan is a huge fan of tea, so we stopped in for a tea tasting.  I haven’t really had much tea since my Philosophy Symposium class in my sixth form year.  I drank gallons of it in an effort to seem smarter and more sophisticated.  (oh, and it worked.  Believe me.) The woman poured tea at an alarmingly fast rate.  It was like a drive-by tea pouring.  Megan bought a blue man tea and Kendra found a nice lavender tea.  Success.

"hey mans!"

I think I'm funny:  Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, FEEL no evil

After that, we headed over to North Beach for happy hour while we waited for Dirk to arrive for dinner.  We found this little Italian place and ordered their cheapest bottle of Cab.  Thankfully, it was actually pretty good.  Our bartender was hot, so of course I managed to spill a glass of wine all over him, the bar, the menus.  I am really a graceful little flower.  Like a ballerina.  Anyway, we moved on to dinner at The Stinking Rose, at the suggestion of some of Kendra’s friends back home.  It’s a garlic restaurant.  Our appetizer was  - you guessed it – garlic.  I think it was called “garlic in a hot tub.”  You just smeared roosted garlic over bread and ate it.  It was actually pretty damn good.  Dirk and I both ate some fish with garlic on it, Megan had pasta baked with garlic, and Kendra had chicken roasted with forty cloves of garlic.  Thank god we met that bartender before we ate there.  He would have recoiled at our stench and would have refused to serve us.  “Dear god, no.  You smell atrocious.”  I really liked that restaurant, but I certainly would not recommend it for anyone who likes human contact. Oh, and if you are a vampire: stay. away.
 
On Friday, Kendra and Megan enjoyed an eight hour tour of the Muir Woods, Sausalito, and Alcatraz.  They kind of liked it.  The tour guide was a bit manic, but the point was that they got to see quite a bit of the area in one day. They have some funny stories about the boat ride and about the tour guide, but I’ll let them tell you (in the comments section…eh? Ehhhhhh?) They were exhausted afterward, so Dirk and I took them to our favorite place on Earth for dinner.  In-N-Out!  Here's a picture of Kendra enjoying California’s finest culinary delicacy:

Saturday was Napa time!  I love any excuse to go into Napa.  I don’t know what I’m doing in terms of picking out wineries, so I just picked ones based on 2-for-1 tasting coupons.  We ended up at Black Stallion, Conn Creek, Rutherford Hill, V. Sattui, and Sequoia Grove. I love making lists and documenting things (“you don’t say!”) so here are my notes about what we tasted and what I thought.

I don't actually know what I'm talking about, but whatever

 Every wine pourer person commented on what a freak I was for writing all of this info down.  You would think that would be pretty common? Maybe they didn’t think it was so common that I nearly had a toddler tantrum when I couldn’t find one of my lists.  Thankfully, Dirk found it before there were too many casualties.  My hero.

at Black Stallion

Megan sitting in front of French Laundry - a restaurant on my Bucket List

Sunday was freezing cold and crappy. We still went to Santa Cruz so that they could see the Ocean.  We did some shopping in San Jose, and here’s where a good story comes in.  Kendra and I have a tendency to buy the same exact clothes.  So we found some outfits that we liked and headed to the dressing room.  We decided to share a dressing room, which is something I might not ever do again.  Kendra tried everything on, liked it, and put her regular clothes back on.  I had to ask the saleslady for a smaller size.  So she knocks on the door to hand me the skirt.  I am standing in the dressing room with a tank top on and no pants.  Kendra opens the door wide open as if to say “come in!” and instead of just grabbing the skirt for me as I am desperately pulling the tank top down to cover my Pikachu, she makes me reach out and grab the skirt myself.  The tank top sprung back to its original position.  The saleslady actually had to take like three steps toward me to hand me the skirt while trying to shield her eyes.  She was horrified and I screamed ”KENDRA!!!!!”  Kendra realized what happened, and we both were like beyond hysterically laughing in the dressing room.  Of course, I still needed another size.  I ask the lady again and when she returns, she shoved her hand in the door with her eyes pointing in the absolute opposite direction.  I don’t blame her.  Of course, that made Kendra and I laugh even harder. Then we realized that she brought the original skirt back to me.  The saleslady was so traumatized that she just threw any old clothes at me to basically say “I will throw up if I have to see any of that ever again.” Good times.   Gooooood times.

So that was their trip! I am glad that they were able to come out and see a little bit of the area.   Thanks for coming out!