Rem and I are home from a lovely little vacation. In the midst of a terrible drought we went on a very rainy week. We need the rain and it was nice to see green hills instead of brown.
We celebrated our 15th anniversary and because of the rain, postponed our planned hot-air balloon flight. We decided to go ahead with our plan to stay overnight in Windsor and enjoyed both lunch and dinner out in Healdsburg.
The rain put a bit of a damper on strolling around and window shopping but after lunch at Bear Republic Brewing Company,
(Rem had one of their beer samplers), we did stop in here:
Lovely items and they know how to spell Dianne! Rem got me a sweet little music charm to add to my charm bracelet.
We stayed in the The Italian Country Cottage at Windrose Romantic Cottages in Windsor.
It was probably bigger than our apartment and with no noisy neighbors and a lovely and yes, romantic setting, it was a great start to the vacation. In fact, we met our neighbor in the morning, an emu, one of eight on the adjacent property.
The cottage included a full kitchen…
A small, cozy living room with gas stove,
a spacious bedroom,
and though we didn’t have a bubble bath in the old-fashioned bathtub, we did very much enjoy a soak in the covered outdoor hot tub later.
We drove the 10 minutes back to Healdsburg in pouring rain for dinner at Baci. In spite of the storm, the place was packed. I had a delicious Risotto Frutti di Mare and Rem chose one of the daily specials: Ravioli with Beef Cheeks and Mushrooms, which he said was “very tender with good sauce.” We shared an order of profiteroles which were yummy but not as good as the ones at Left Bank in Larskpur which come with a small pitcher of hot chocolate sauce.
Back down the freeway with our windshield wipers going like gangbusters to “our” cottage. As the sign says, it really was the sweet life.
The kitchen is stocked with a fruit and cheese platter for your arrival and waffle mix and a waffle iron, juice, fruit, coffee, cereal, etc. for the following morning. Rem did the honors for breakfast, our anniversary, both fixing waffles and cleaning up. After a final trip to Healdsburg to the Oakville Grocery to pick up lunch to eat en route, we hit the road heading for Sea Ranch.
Sea Ranch was the usual delightful mix of doing very little, eating well and the occasional venture outdoors to see the local flora and fauna. I crafted and read, Rem did ham radio and played games on his iPhone. We celebrated my birthday in very low-key style, cooking together (Rem did all the clean up, bless him) and I took a walk.
Some beautiful Sea Ranch architecture, blooming daffodils and the Sea Ranch sheep.
Seals and high surf.
A birthday selfie.
We were a little relieved that it was pouring today when we had to pack up and head home. Sea Ranch has very changeable weather and often offers the most glorious weather the day you depart.
I’ll write more soon about a few of the recipes we tried and share some pictures of the crafting I did.
Thank you for stopping by.
dianne faw 