Tag: California
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On the Sideways Movie Trail: A Wine Tasting Tour of Santa Barbara
Far from home, in the Macedonian capital city of Skopje, the American wine-lover’s flick Sideways was providing background fodder at a wine event. For a second, Shawn and I thought we’d been whisked back to the United States, until we spotted the Academy Award winner’s subtitles written in the Cyrillic script, an alphabet made even more foreign after…
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Tasting Central California: A Paso Robles Wine Tour
Six decades ago, my grandparents and their then-eight children piled into the family car and drove to San Luis Obispo from Minnesota. My grandfather was to begin a teaching position there. Though the family’s chapter in San Luis Obispo (SLO) ended up being a short one (frankly, I don’t know how they bid farewell to…
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Wine, Surf, & Sun: A Weekend in Sonoma County, California
Taking to Bodega Bay’s beach just before sunset, we had to pinch ourselves that we were really strolling through the golden sand in winter. Between us both, Shawn and I had endured our fair share of brutal Midwestern, Canadian, even Continental-European winters. But this weather, we were told, was exceptional even by California standards. During…
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Perusing the Pumpkin Patch
After ten years of life abroad sans an authentic jack o’lantern, I was delighted to awaken my Halloween spirit by visiting a veritable American pumpkin patch last autumn, following a splendid long weekend in Napa Valley. The California farm’s scruffy scarecrows, colorful gourds, and pumpkins transformed into storybook characters brought to mind some of my favorite Halloween…
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A Long Weekend in California Wine Country: Getting a Taste for Napa and Sonoma Wines (Part 2)
Note: This is part two of the series, Long Weekend in California Wine Country. Click the image for part one.
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A Long Weekend in California Wine Country: Getting a Taste for Napa and Sonoma Wines (Part 1)
“I should like to spend the whole of my life traveling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home.” William Hazlitt There seems to exist a syndrome among international travelers and expats. They’ve visited the world’s most far-flung destinations, but haven’t seen much of what their home countries have to…
