Day 2

We started Tuesday with a tour of the winery at Chateau Chantal.  Despite not being overly impressed by their wines, it was still incredibly interesting to see the process that goes into making them.  We learned about the wine-making process in general and the history of the region and winery.  The first two things you can read about on Wikipedia, so I’ll only share something about the last - the address of  the winery is “1500 rue de vin” after a vat holding 1500 gallons of Riesling fell off the back of a truck when it was being moved from an older location to their expanded facility and thus christened the road.

Since we had kicked off the morning thinking and talking about wine we decided to keep it going.  We stopped at three more vineyards on the peninsula for tastings (broken up by lunch).  Bowers Harbor and Chateau Grand Traverse (whose “late harvest Riesling is one of Sarah’s favorites) were plenty good, but our favorite was Brys Estate (recommended by the waitress at the Boathouse).  

We came away with a total of 5 bottles (3 from Brys and 2 from CGT including their “late harvest Chardonnay).  Though we didn’t especially want to eat lunch we needed something to soak up the alcohol so we stopped at the Peninsula Grill where Sarah had a very interesting pulled pork flatbread and I enjoyed some delicious fish and chips. 

After 3 wineries and some food we decided we’d spent enough time on the peninsula so we headed for town.  We weren’t quite sure where to park so we pulled into our hotel, about a mile from the main strip, hoping for early check-in.  We lucked out and were able to get into our beautiful beach front room.  And by beachfront I mean that we step out of the room and are on the beach.  It reminds me of Encinitas except there are ducks on the beach and no saltwater smell.  We dropped the bags and walked into town where we stopped at a fascinating Lego “play center” where they had all kinds of Legos for kids to play with and none for sale (Sarah’s note: If they’d had any for sale, we totally would have gotten some, that place made me want to PLAY).  That's all legos: 

 Except the one on the right, that's Sarah.

After that was a stop at a café for refueling where they served gorgeous espresso drinks, delicious coffee, and adorable “morsels” – basically teeny-tiny cakes.  

Despite our attempts to stay moving, Sarah was wiped so we headed back to the room where she took a two-hour nap (and I composed the post about the Boathouse). 

When Sarah awoke we started to think about dinner.  Neither of us was very hungry and nothing sounded good.  Then we started eating Tums.  Magically, menus started to look appealing.  We decided on Stella, an Italian restaurant located in the former asylum.  And what a wonderful decision it was.  Almost all of the food was local (as is true of many of the restaurants up here) and the freshness was apparent.  Sarah started with sweetbreads atop whipped Gorgonzola and had pasta with duck (surprise surprise), sautéed onions, grapes, and mascarpone.  I chose the grilled octopus (though there were bits of sausage that were really the star) and had a simple pasta with sautéed porcini mushrooms in a tomato sauce.  For dessert we shared a strawberry crostata (with some of those fresh strawberries Sarah raved about in a perfect crust) and blueberry-basil and vanilla-rhubarb gelatos.  An excellent meal all around and the small portions made it the perfect remedy for the previous night’s errors.

 After that it was back to the hotel room, where we kept the door open and listened to the waves as long as we could stand the cold before finally locking up and going to sleep. (Sarah’s note: and I let Jay watch the basketball game. I want credit for that).

Jay