Girls Weekend

Last weekend, I flew down to San Francisco to hang out with my BFF Becca before she leaves the west coast to start an MBA at Duke.  I am, of course, very happy and excited for Becca and this big step she's taking, but super bummed that once again, we are swapping coasts. So glad we got this weekend together!

View from our hotel room.

Our time in San Francisco proper was pretty limited, so we made the most of it! We met up with some of Becca's friends for happy hour and I indulged in my first margarita in over a year and half, had a delicious Californian farm-to-table dinner, then more luxury drinks back at the hotel (Becca managed to score us an awesome deal at CLIFT for the night, so we felt very posh), and squeezed in a bit of shopping the next morning. I found a darling souvenir for Gussie at Rare Device and would have happily bought one of everything in the entire store.

The next day we headed to Palo Alto. I went for a stroll around Stanford and tumbled across Rodin's Gates of Hell currently on view at the Cantor Arts Center. Pretty incredible.

Then it was time for Sunset Magazine's Celebration Weekend. Every year Sunset Magazine turns their headquarters into and a (mostly) outdoor street fair with tons of vendors offering wine/beer tastings, food samples, travel information, gardening tips, and cooking demonstrations.  So much good stuff!

Yummy olive oil (kinda regret not checking a bag so I could have brought some home).

Gotta check out Fabio of Top Chef fame host a gnocchi making demo.

One of the highlights for me was a behind the scenes peek at the Sunset test kitchen. Want that job.

 

And the incredible California produce.

 

While we didn't have time to visit Napa or Sonoma, but we did check out a couple of wineries near Palo Alto.

Shepherd sister sandwich!

Our favorite bottle from Picchetti Winery.

I couldn't have had a better time, but was pretty happy to land at PDX and be greeted by Augusta. Three and a half days is a long time to be gone from your baby! Huge thanks to my Mom and Ian for taking such good care of her while I was away. It didn't seem like she missed me at all...
P.S.
Gotta love that Ian's first outing as a single dad was to IKEA.