Wally’s First Wine Trip

Hi everyone,

Wally turned 7 weeks on the Monday just past and its pretty crazy how fast time is passing by. Vicki (Josh’s mum) came, stayed for 4 weeks and then passed the baton to my mum who is staying for 3 weeks. Since it was Mum’s first visit to California, we planned a little trip up to the wine country to (1) show Mum around and (2) collect our wine.

This little trip though was good practice for what we may need to do if we plan on travelling overseas soon. We might have to be a bit more savvy with what we pack because knowing we had the car, we felt like packing everything and the kitchen sink.

Wally looked pretty concerned that Josh and I probably didn’t know what we were doing.

We left pretty early on a Friday afternoon thinking to beat the commuter traffic. Alas we forgot that we lived in California and the traffic is bad all the time.

After a slow journey, we finally arrived at our accommodation which felt like it was in the middle of a redwood forest.

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Generally, I would say our accommodation was very nice BUT they failed to mention that stairs to the second level was so steep it felt like we were climbing up and down a ladder!

Poor Mum had to sleep on the lower level because there was no way Josh and I would carry Wally up and down those stairs. The moment we could dump our bags though, we were back in the car and headed towards our first winery: Foppianos.

When we got to Foppianos, the sun was just about to set so we enjoyed a wine flight in the late evening sun.

From there we headed back to our accommodation because we didn’t want to tire Wally out. Poor Wally though, his sleeping arrangements were not exactly stellar.

Not to worry though, he dealt with the inconvenience like a trooper. The next day, we discovered that we had forgotten to pack any head wear or footwear for Wally. Mum and I quickly popped out to get supplies and then we made sure to bundle Wally against the cool air as we once again headed out to a winery.

Our next winery was Gracianna where once again, you guessed it, we enjoyed our wine flight out in the sun with Wally snoozing on the table.

And then we moved on to visit Thomas George while Wally was still snoozing.

At this point we knew we had pushed our luck as far as it would go so we chose a low key brewery to have a quick snack. Wally was well and truly cooked by this point:

So after a quick meat and cheese plate:

we headed back for the night.

And that’s it, a successful wine trip which resulted in a full wine rack:

a happy Sim & Josh and an ambivalent Wally. In other news, Josh and I finally decided to become a two car family so I popped out the other day and got myself the car I’ve always wanted:

Always wanted to drive a mini. And yes, it fits Wally’s car seat and his pram in the boot (but not much else). I actually went to the dealer with a tape measure and measured all the different car boots before I was willing to commit.

Anyway, that’s the latest on our little family.

Talk soon,

Sim, Josh & Wally