We have been dilatory in our work! We have not written our blog for several days. We should repent our ways, but we can report that we have been enjoying ourselves so immensely that this has not been possible.
First, we thoroughly enjoyed our days in San Simeon. Our wine tasting was profitable in that we tasted 20 wines in two days and enjoyed most of them. We started with five at the Rusack Winery near Los Olivos, suggested by Ben's cousin Karen. The winery makes an excellent pinot noir, one bottle of which we used to start the gift for our Atherton hosts, Peter and Jane. We tasted a a few others at Rusack, enjoying their chardonnay as well. From there we sought lunch in Los Olivos and found a good coffee shop for the XXX dry skim cappuccino with a textured design. The Panino bakery there did good sandwiches, John's being similar to an Italian hoagie. Los Olivos is one of the little California agricultural towns that would have vanished had the wine industry not come along and gone touristy. It's a pretty little village just off the main road, with a dusty 19th century main street and some older but redone buildings for atmosphere. MiniQuaint has been active.
Near Cambria we stayed at our old favorite, the San Simeon Pines where John had first stayed forty years ago in 1969, and we had had three previous nights there. It overlooks the ocean on a bluff and is a beautfiul place to watch the sun go down. It's also close to Cambria for the restaurants and San Simeon State Park for the Hearst Castle. It was also evacuated the day we were there because of the tsunami threat from the huge Japanese earthquake. There was noticeable wave activity as we stood on a higher bluff watching the Pacific, but there was no recognizable tsunami near us.
Twenty miles south in Morro Bay, though, the waters were funneled nto the small harbor and did significant damage, as they did further north in Santa Cruz. All of California is abuzz about tsunamis and the affects on nuclear power plants.We dined at Indigo Moon, Cambria the first night where we tasted another four wines—two reds and two whites. The whites were a sauvignon blanc in the style of the Loire or New Zealand and a moursanne Rhone style that was not to our taste. We also had two reds, one a mix of zinfandel and syrah and the other a Rhone style mix. Excellent. Coupled with the food, the restaurant was a star, made even better by the babbly friendly waitress.
Friday last week was William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon Castle day. We did the upstairs tour of Wm and Marion Davies's scandalously adjacent bedrooms,
and the kitchen as well as his library. The place is overwhelming in its colossal bad taste. There are tons, literally, of wonderful art, but when combined it becomes a castle full of kitsch. Perhaps this is what he wanted, but it is artistically magnificent and gross at the same time. Of course the view is wonderful. We went back for the evening tour, which included volunteers moving around period 1930s dress acting as if they were guests of the newspaper baron and his actress mistress. Marion Davies was supposed to be sweet, lovable, and though not intellectually bright, very rich through her investments in Palm Springs land. Visitors included Cary Grant, Churchill, the Calvin Coolidges, and David Niven. Katherine Hepburn was invited, declined and was never asked back! At night, with the lights, the place takes on more of a sophisticated look.
Dinner in Cambria at Robyn's---a good meal of local food with another four wines. This time there was another chardonnay, a sauvignon blanc, a pinot and a Rhone mix. All lovely. In the afternoon we had visited a wine shop and tasted another five there, two of which we bought.
Unfortnately we are not carrying wines back to Washington, but we can order them.
We drove north on Saturday along the corniche. Not only is much of the road under construction, some of it has literally crashed into the sea. Just two days after our wheels drove us along the edge, the road was closed due to landslides. I wonder what it feels like to be in a car falling down the 100s of feet of Big Sur on to the Pacific Beach? We will not find out.
Saturday we lunched at Nepenthe after walking the trails at the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park which is a cliff paradise overlooking the blue Pacific, a beach with its own waterfall, and the far distant whales spouting off. Very idyllic.
We arrived in Atherton to a very full schedule of events on Saturday. Our hosts Jane and Peter laid on a busy few days. Saturday we dressed up for a dinner of the American Liver Foundation at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Jane had acquired a table in honor of a friend of her's who was being given an award so friends gathered and enjoyed each others' company. The food was dreadful—not at all what one would expect of the magnificent hotel but the speeches on scientific discovery and drugs challenged our intellect in some new ways and made the evening a lot of fun. Of course a table full of interesting people from all over the world helped too.
Sunday afternoon we heard a concert at Stanford of members of the Adler music program that leads singers into the San Francisco Opera. Lovely Russian music, gorgeous voices. Peter is on the Opera's board so it was wonderful to go hear some of the new talent. We followed this with dinner at Abysnthe near the Civic Center in San Francisco and a concert by Yefim Bronfman, a world renowned pianist, who played Haydn, Schumann and 12 Chopin etudes. We have never heard them all before. He was called back for two encores.
On Monday we went to the California Museum of Science in Golden Gate Park where we enjoyed the living roof, the rain forest, full of butterflies, and the planetarium show of what's needed for the beginning of life both here on earth and on other planets and moons both in and out of the solar system. We lunched with friend Ruth at the Boulangerie at Cole and Parnassus in the Haight and then had dinner with her and godson John and his wife Noriko at Chez Papa on Potrero Hill. An excellent red burgundy to go with fine food at this gem of a French restaurant.
Tuesday Jane and Peter invited friends from the Canal Cruise last fall to a tasting menu that they had bought at a fund raising auction given by a firm that has catered events at their home. Melons is the name of the firm. We went to South San Francisco to the firm's kitchens and dined on delicacies like beet meringue, pate de fois, crème fraiche, roast salmon, and roast beef. Wines to go with included champagne from Napa, chardonnay, petite syrah, pinot noir and Portuguese port. A fabulous evening with friends Peggy and Chris, and Gigi and Ed.
Wednesday, we drove into the city with the thought of going to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which unfortunately was closed, so we took the ancient F trolley up to the Castro, walked around and came home to pack. Wednesday night we ate lots of tapas with Peter with a Spanish white verdejo at a local Spanish restaurant and on Thursday boarded a mid-morning flight back to Washington. What a great time.
No comments:
Post a Comment