Chocolate ice cream cake and bubble wine at midnight!
C&O Trattoria for dinner with friends and family.
Thanks everyone for coming out!
chocolate
Solvang Day 2
Since we had an early night last night, we got up bright and early for breakfast and a stroll around town.
Solvang is a Danish town in Santa Barbara County that was founded 100 years ago.
I have been to Denmark many times, and to Solvang a couple of times before, but I am yet to figure out what these little houses are. They look like small bird houses, but I’m pretty sure they are not…
We were only gonna have breakfast, take a stroll around town and then head back home when we walked by the Lucas & Lewellen tasting room and this sign;
I dont think anyone of us was really feeling it, it wasnt even noon yet, but the “buy one case and get an additional case for 1 cent” was really tempting!
But we couldnt buy a two cases of wine without tasting it first!
The wine was not good enough to buy a full case, but the lady pouring our wine told us to go to the Mandolina tasting room down the street.
We liked that wine better, so we bought a couple of cases!
We had to pay a last visit to a bakery while waiting for our wines to get ready.
Solvang
We drove up to Solvang to have a relaxing weekend with lots of wine! Our first stop was Gaineys Vineyard,
We were told Gainey was one of the first wineries that open up in the Santa Ynez Valley, we thought it was a little too commercialized for us. The wine was ok, but we were not that impressed and none of us bought any wines.
We had only planned to visit one vineyard and then just hit the tasting rooms in Solvang, but since we were a little disappointed with Gainey, we decided to hit up one more vineyard. The first one we saw was Buttonwood Farm.
Buttonwood had a totally different feel from Gainey, they were super busy but it was a warm, cosy and welcoming atmosphere.
The Sauvignon Blanc was really good, and I think I will visit this place again!
Once back in Solvang, we visited Carivintas Winery’s tasting room. There were nothing wrong with the wine, but the tasting room itself was a little annoying. I like the idea of allowing the dogs in the tasting room, but I didnt like the art on the walls or the labels, and it seemed like the girl pouring our wines have had one too many, and not in a charming way.
We had some time before dinner and stopped by one last tasting room; Dascomb Cellars. We all loved this place from the moment we walked through the door. Sofas, comfy chairs, fireplace and Trivial Pursuit questions on the tables. I bought a bottle of the 2008 Dascomb Roussanne, and the 2005 Port from East Valley Vineyard was Ah-mazing! I’m usually not a big fan of port wines, but it was served with raspberry chocolate that we let melt in our mouths while sipping on the port. My friend got me a bottle and the raspberry chocolate to go with it, since it is my birthday week. Yay!
There isn’t much to do in Solvang after 10pm, so we headed back to our hotel early.
My Sister is Here!
Ever since they booked their tickets, I’ve been super excited for this day! Then a storm rolled in over America and they shut down the airport in Chicago for two days. If it would have been me traveling, either me or my luggage would have been lost somewhere along the way, cos it always happens to me. But their connecting flight was scheduled to get into Chicago two hours after they open up the airport, so they made it through with no problem at all – they were actually a little early touching down in LA!
AND they bought chocolate!
10 days worth of breakfast!
My Sister is Here!
Ever since they booked their tickets, I’ve been super excited for this day! Then a storm rolled in over America and they shut down the airport in Chicago for two days. If it would have been me traveling, either me or my luggage would have been lost somewhere along the way, cos it always happens to me. But their connecting flight was scheduled to get into Chicago two hours after they open up the airport, so they made it through with no problem at all – they were actually a little early touching down in LA!
AND they bought chocolate!
10 days worth of breakfast!
Cake at work
We had cake at work on Friday, and I found this photo I took of it in the camera today.
no.6 Abita Beer Turbodog
Todays beer: Turbodog from Abita Brewing Company, Abita Springs, Louisiana. 5.6% alc/vol.
An brown ale that was supposed to have a chocolate taste, but I thought it was a little watery. I like the label. 3 out of 5
Chocolate Wine
I love chocolate, and I like wine, but I’m not so sure about chocolate wine… maybe I will have the guts to buy it next time I go to the store.
Cerro Catedral
Cerro Catedra, South Americas largest ski resort is located 19km from Bariloche, sweet, thats a 30 minute drive tops! Hmm, that’s if everyone had their chains on, and/or knew how to drive in a heavy snow fall… Oh well, that’s not the case so we sat back, relaxed and watched the chaos.
A little delayed, but safe and sound we made it up and were ready to hit some fresh powder.
But wait, due to the heavy snow (and it kept on dumping) they just had to dig out the lifts first!
Fortunately, only half of the system was snowed in, and we had plenty of snow to play in until they had found the rest of the lifts.
We found an open field with untouched snow, we just had to traverse over to the next peak. Traverse over is a piece of cake for skiers, but a pain for boarders. Magnus gave Geico one of his poles to help keep the hight and speed, but Geico still didn’t make it all way and dropped down early. Magnus was happy anyway, now he got a chance to show us how they use to ski with just one pole back in the 19th century.
One more powder day down, 4 out of 4, not bad at all!
We had a bunch of things to take care of after the mountain today, me and Danny are heading back to US tomorrow so we had get our things together, go to the supermarket to pick up snacks, find the bus station where our bus will leave from tomorrow, get a postcard for my grandfather, get some chocolate, shower, check email and flight reservations and play dominoes. All in this order and it had to be done before 9pm, we had dinner reservations and were told that if we were 5 minutes late we would loose our table.
We hit the supermarket on our way down from the mountain, drove around for a while trying to find the bus station when we realized that all that time we had was not gonna be enough!
Change of plans… lets find a postcard and the bus station tomorrow! It would be a bummer not to be able to buy chocolate, but I would still survive, let’s just get back to the hostel to shower and get our stuff together.
Quickly check e-mails and flights, no time for dominoes! Heading for the italian restaurant that we all were super excited about when we saw the big chocolate store was still open! Jackpot!
We fooled around for a while before we realized we’d loose our reservation and had to run the last few blocks to the restaurant.
Ice cream for dessert!
We found another irish bar and introduced Danny to the world of Pisco Sour.
Exclusive chocolate at 3:30 am, best thing ever!
San Martin de los Andes
The road didn’t get much better this morning, so we quickly decided to take it easy, not rush to the mountain, get there when we get there and chill in the town instead.
San Martin de Los Andes is a small town with a population of 24’000, at the foot of the Andes, only 45km from the Chilean border. We got there around lunch time and immediately went exploring.
I was in the hunt for a postcard for my grandfather and a new first layer to ski in (the first layer next to your skin that is keeping you warm and dry by soaking up all the sweat). I only brought one first layer, and all the hikes have made it stinky – I was in the need for a new one anyway so I might as well buy one here!
But first things first, lunch!
What is the deal with every country that has mountain has good chocolate? It is not necessary a good thing for someone like me with severe chocolate addiction.
And then ice cream off course!
Since it’s a relatively small town with only one main street, we managed to find my first layer shirt quickly, but unfortunately no postcard for my grandfather. They have siesta in Argentina, which means – We’re eating dinner late! With this in mind we went to the supermarket to get something to snack on at the hostel while waiting for the dinner hour.
Loving the prices here, yes, a bottle of really nice wine for 16 pesos, which is about US$4!
And the 1 liter bottles of beers off course! Much more social to buy one large bottle and share than many small ones!
On the way home I was kind of in my own little world, as usual thinking about happy clouds when I suddenly caught the boys drooling while staring at this window. Sorry Nea, we’re eating this for dinner tonight! Quickly in to make a reservation for 9:30pm!
El touristo!
Back to the hostel for a game of dominos and backgammon.
Playing with the flash – to cool for school!
We were all super excited for dinner, this was gonna be our first proper dinner at a restaurant together, and the guys were gonna get to eat whatever they were gonna get to eat… When we were about 5 steps away from the restaurant where we had reserved a table, the whole town turned black. The city ran out of power! Everything was dark, except, wait, our restaurant still had power! We are pretty good at picking restaurants!
Whats cooking?
Argentina are proud of their red meat, and they apparently know how to cook it as well. I would not know since I dont like red meat. But I’m not so picky and there is always something on the menu that I can eat, like seafood or chicken, and if not there’s always fries and a bowl of ice cream. Since the Chileans really know how to cook seafood and we were only 45km away from the Chilean border, I ordered trout, which was awesome!After dinner we went to an Irish bar that we had spotted earlier, but they had a horrible horrible cover band, I swear I could have done it better! And the beers were a little over priced so we called it a night early so we could get up early and dandy to ski in the morning.
