Thanksgiving (Nov 2018)

This year, Josh and I were too late making plans for Thanksgiving so we decided to have a quiet celebration, just the two of us, in the wine country of Northern California. To give ourselves as much time away as possible, we thought we would beat the traffic by leaving Wednesday afternoon.  First up, the classic “we’ve packed the car ” shot. 

Our road trip did not get off to a great start because it was pouring rain. Once we left though, we still had to brave Whole Foods to get all the groceries we would need for the next couple of days.

That last picture was an impulse buy gone wrong.  It was supposed to be chia seed pudding with raspberries.  Instead it tasted like cardboard gloop with raspberries. Josh rolled his eyes when I put it in the shopping trolley and then took great delight in saying “I told you so” when I made a face after tasting it. Anyway, once we had all of supplies,  we decided we were finally ready to brave the drive and the weather to the holiday house we were staying at.

And after about 2.5 hours of crawling traffic, we were there!

As you can tell, we were staying at a ‘hunting’ lodge. Not sure how much hunting the hosts did but there were fake birds and pictures of deer everywhere.  And wherever they could fit it, there was log-like structures and antlers everywhere. For example…

Our hosts from this Airbnb were so lovely and thought about every little convenience.  Even down to having two pairs of thongs on the veranda for us to use.

Our first night was pretty low-key. We just hung out and had some homemade pizzas. The next morning, we were looking forward to a great Thanksgiving day of doing nothing.  During the day, the place we were staying looked even better. Check out the view from the deck!

And even the hunting lodge looked glorious in the day.

Although it was raining still off and on, Josh and I were really excited to go outside and explore. And from the very start, our walk to and along the river was so pretty and incredibly peaceful.

Josh was shocked to hear I never learnt how to skip rocks so we spent a while practising our techniques. 

When it started raining, we decided to head back inside and start cooking our lunch/dinner. Because a whole turkey was going to be too much food, we decided to buy either a turkey leg or a turkey breast to have. However, Whole Foods regularly commits highway robbery and it would have cost $40-$50 for either of those so we ended up buying ourselves a chicken.

After we ate way too much, Josh and I dozed in front of the TV while churning through marathon episodes of Mystery Science Theatre 3000.  If you haven’t watched this show, give it a chance. It’s pretty hilarious. 

The next morning, we woke up with a plan…. a plan to wine/beer taste. First we had to get our chores out of the way. We stopped off at Foppiano’s to fill up our growlers and get our next installment of wine. At this time of the year, autumn has hit and Foppiano’s vines were the loveliest of colours. 

Since we had an afternoon of imbibing ahead of us, we stopped to line our stomach’s at the “Wurst” place possible. 

So many puns with this restaurant’s name – The Wurst.  The greatest one we saw was a sign outside the wine bar next door which said “Now that you’ve tasted the best, come taste the Wurst!”. Gold!

Our next stop was a brewery called St Florian’s. I ordered a mini flight and Josh ordered the maxi flight.

St Florian’s was really cool because it seemed to be a pet project by a number of firemen in the county. Quick fact – St Florian is the patron saint of firemen. The beer was lovely and there was a grapefruit beer that I absolutely demolished. We promptly bought a six pack and a tall boy and decided to go to our next stop… Grasianna’s!

At this point, the weather decided to not cooperate and it started pouring again. I couldn’t take more pictures than the one above which showed the beautiful colour of the vineyard in autumn. It was getting dark so Josh and I headed back into Healdsburg for our last stop of the day – Willi’s Seafood Bar. 

Josh and I were really excited to eat a whole heap of quality seafood and some of the dishes we had were…

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Disappointingly, it was all just ok.  The King Crab Legs were really watery and the oysters tasted like cardboard.  The ceviche was great and the octopus was cooked well.  They spoilt the octopus by putting some weird mole sauce which to me tasted like raw curry sauce.  And then, at the end when we got mussels, the mussels were so small. 

I took a picture with a dinner spoon on the plate for reference.  Josh and I were not impressed by this place especially after we got the cheque.

That’s fine, lesson learned and we won’t go back there. We walked back to the car and came across …

a Christmas tree! Yay, not long now until Christmas time. Cannot wait to share what Josh and I get up to over Christmas.  Until then, Happy Thanksgiving!

Talk soon,

Sim & Josh