Oh yea, after our hike Evan and I brought our picnic lunch over to Arista, in the Russian River valley, and enjoyed this beautiful view
while we dined on pasta salads, black truffle cheese, grape leaves, a French baguette and carrots. After lunch, we did some tasting. Arista was another favorite winery and the staff was accommodating and helpful. In addition, the winery had gorgeous gardens that we toured.
Next up, Hop Kiln winery, which actually was our least favorite wine of the trip.
While the wine pourer was very nice and accommodating, the wine itself was very alcoholic tasting. So much in fact that I wanted to spit some of the pours. However, they did have some GREAT chocolate sauces (we bought a bottle).
Our final stop of the day was Kunde Winery. We had not planned to make this stop, but our hotel gave us a bunch of free wine tickets.
**Note** If you are staying in wine country make sure to ask your hotel for wine passes. Ours' had both free passes and two for one passes.
Kunde was probably the most extensive winery we had attended.
The wines were OK, probably second least favorite. However, there were a few bottles that were nice table wines that would be good to go with most foods (and they were probably the least expensive).
After we arrived back at our hotel for cocktail hour, we decided to take our drinks up to the rooftop hot tub. We relaxed for a little while and enjoyed a glass of wine.
Afterwards, we got ready and walked to dinner:
Finally, this girl met the infamous Girl and the Fig! I was SO excited!!!!
We started with the arugula and fig salad.
and split a French wine flight.
For my entree, I enjoyed the flounder with lemon-caper brown butter sauce with sauted spinach and potatoes.
Ok, so I know the blog world is going to get a little mad, but I have to say I was not a huge fan of this meal. It was a little too buttery and while it tasted good while eating it, the fact that it was drowned in butter and lost all other flavors made this meal not one of my favorites.
Tuesday morning I woke up bright and early and went for my first run of the trip! I planned on just running until I got tired. The terrain, while beautiful, was somewhat flat. Here are my stats:
Distance: 5 miles
Duration: 42:35
Mile 1: 9:06
Mile 2: 8:12
Mile 3: 8:42
Mile 4: 7:53
Mile 5: 8:40
I felt great!!! I loved every second of this run. It felt so nice to sweat out all the wines and heavy cuisines I had been enjoying the last few days. It was amazing!! I had a lot of enjoy and the weather was perfect (cool but sunny) and just a wonderful run. I been having some tough runs in the snow and cold lately, so this run was just amazing. It was also great scenery and I even forgot my iPod, but that didn't bother me because I had lots of scenes to keep me from getting bored.
After a quick shower and breakfast, it was off to do our final few wineries of our trip. None of the wineries were memorable, except for the Deerfield Ranch winery. Great wines and an awesome space!!! The tasting was done in their tasting cave, so cool!!
After picking up a few more of our favorite bottles, we headed out on our way to San Francisco.
To be continued......
