Just because I haven’t been going out doesn’t mean I haven’t been having fun and eating delicious meals.

On Friday morning, I went for a tour at the new Larkspur Hotel in Mill Valley. I’m interviewing hotels looks for the best one to host the Mountain Biking Marin Cross Country Mountain Bike Adventure coming up in May of this year. I was very impressed with this new hotel. It’s located on Highway 1 in Mill Valley right off of Highway 101, next to Frantoio. The Larkspur Hotel has done an amazing job remodeling the hotel (formally the Holiday Inn Express) and I was very impressed with Greg, the General Manager and Cassie, the Sales Manager. The hotel is beautiful, has a view of the bay and Mt. Tam and is located right next to the bike/walk path that will take you in to Sausalito or Mill Valley. I was wowed by the people and the place. I plan to recommend this hotel to Celia for the Mountain Biking Marin adventure.

I almost forgot to mention. Cassie from the Larkspur Hotel gave me a goodie bag when I was leaving. Among other things, it had a solar powered plastic flower that moves when the sun shines on it. Really, I think this is what sealed the deal. It goes nicely with the wind-up toys and purple pens in my office. (All reminders to me that life is about having fun.)

After my meeting at the hotel I met with Marilyn LoRusso, aka @Fun_Master at Cafe del Sol in Tam Junction and spent the afternoon chatting about social media and making life fun (Marilyn has some great tips on how to stay in the fun mode). I enjoyed sipping on a delicious ginger limeade during our meeting.

Then on Friday night we had a small dinner party. Since one of my fabulous neighbors gave me a gift certificate to Whole Foods I splurged on a yummy meal. We started with brie cheese and olive bread for appetizers while I prepared blackened salmon, roasted veggies, broiled asparagus, and salad. We finished the meal off with some Porto from our visit to the Napa Valley Wineries and yummy dessert.

I used the blackened salmon recipe I found on RealSimple.com. It was delicious!

Today is 01.02.2010 which is a palindrome. I thought this would be a great day to review the past year. Sally Around The Bay is less than a year old. I had the idea of starting this blog floating around in my head for awhile, but I did not start working on it until the beginning of last year. I think it was right around New Year’s last year when the name finally came to me. I remembered that my name, Sally was actually a word in the English dictionary meaning to go out on a venture or an excursion (usually off the beaten path).

Last year around this time I was feeling a little burned out and decided I needed to do something to motivate myself to get out of the house and try new things. I know when I travel I like to find the “local” spots to try rather than the typical overpriced tourist traps so I figured people might be interested in reading about the various local gems I found. I was right. Since I started this blog back in April I have had so much support and encouragement and have made a lot of new friends. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read my blog over the past year.

I was just reviewing my blog posts thinking about 2009. I’m so thankful I started this blog. I have met some of the most amazing people because of it. I have also discovered some pretty awesome restaurants and businesses around the bay area.

I think the blog experience that I personally got the most out of was the visit to the farm in Petaluma. I got to meet Tara Smith who I found incredibly inspirational. I met Tara thanks to Peggy (my Twitter friend turned real friend) mentioning the farm on Twitter. View photos of the farm visit here.

Another fun experience was visiting Mrs. Grossman’s sticker factory. When I saw Mrs. Grossman on Twitter my brain went on fast forward down memory lane. I was so happy when they invited me to come in for a tour.

My blog inspired me to be bold, to try new things. As many of you know I did a big bold move when I wrote the open letter to MiniSF telling them about my Big Mini Dream. That was fun. I did not get my Mini (yet) I’m still hoping… but I did have a ton of fun with it and did catch their attention. Thank you to each of you that supported my Big Mini Dream. I was amazed at all the support I got. You people are awesome!

I got a new hat to help save a home.

Thanks to my blog I got out of my comfort zone and tried new shops and restaurants.
Some of my favorites were:

Coast Café in Bolinas.

Naan ‘N’ Curry in San Francisco

Toronado & Rosamunde Sausage Grill in San Francisco

The Whipper Snapper in San Rafael

Peju Winery in Napa

Also learned I like more than one Sushi restaurant in the Bay Area and that Thai food makes me smile.  I think I discovered the best Chinese food in the Bay Area. Oh and I almost forgot the best Dim Sum in San Francisco!

Discovered Fourth Street in Berkeley.

Shopping at Gioia in San Anselmo.

Met a super cool relationship expert and the bloggers at MoreMarin. I also met Lissa Rankin from Owning Pink.

Thanks to my blog, I got interviewed on the BlogHer show The Juice and was mentioned on the Miniology radio show. Also something exciting to me was I got sponsors for my blog (check out the upper right column —> and be sure to click on them. Thanks!)

I can’t forget Mill Valley on Tuesday Nights or Marilyn, the fun master.  I met Marilyn earlier this year, she always reminds me to have fun. I also met ATOMsanRafael who are super nice people that fixed one of my broken appliances.

My fondest memories from 2009 are the TweetUps and the wonderful people I met at the TweetUps especially Diane Fischler and Ken Underscore.

Twitter is Magical
Awesome Marin TweetUp

Stay tuned for future TweetUps in Marin! Working on one for February. (Still looking for a restaurant in Novato to volunteer). Moylan’s – hint hint.

Happy New Year!

I look forward to another year of blogging.

According to our friends, if we were going to buy fine wines we needed fine wine tools such as the Wine Saver Vacu Vin to preserve our wine after opening. They said the best place to get this was at Dean and Deluca located in St. Helena. Plus, they wanted us to see this adorable Dean and Deluca store full of gourmet food, wine and unique kitchen supplies. They also suggested we get some bread and cheese to snack on between wine tasting. This turned out to be a great idea! We bought some olive bread and sweet buttery bread that tasted like a big giant croissant. I resisted buying the chocolates.

I also resisted buying the gelato.

I figured I had eaten so much the night before. It was best to stick with the bread and cheese.

Peju Winery was the last winery we visited on Sunday. So, I’d already had a day full of this wine is blah, blah, blah with a nutty, floral, fruity, dry, smooth, distinct, oakey, heavy, fresh, light, dense, muted, gentle taste with a hint of blah, blah, blah. I was just going with the flow of wherever my friends took me and enjoying the beautiful scenery and the pleasant tasting wines but I pretty much tuned out what the people were saying about the wine.

Peju Gift Shop

When we entered Peju Winery we were greeted and escorted to a tasting counter. I saw a white guy in a tie. I was ready for more blah, blah, blah when suddenly this guy broke out in a rap song about the wine, then continued with some hip hop, yodeling and a bit of opera and some random jokes. This guy is Alan Arnapole and he is hilarious and talented. He had the four of us cracking up and looking around at each other in a sort of disbelief thinking is this guy for real? He was, and he kept going. We stayed and tasted all that he had to offer. We also left with a few bottles of very nice wine in hand.

I was so impressed with Alan that I went home and did a little research on him. Turns out we’re not the first people to discover him. He has been featured in guide books, has been on travel shows, and was recently featured in the Napa Valley Register.  Alan even has CDs where he tells the story of Napa Valley with his singing.

You can listen to samples of Alan’s yodeling here.

Peju winery is beautiful and Alan Arnapole is a breath of fresh air in this sometimes stuffy culture of wine connoisseurs.

I found this YouTube video of Alan doing his thing.

Disclaimer: I am not a wine connoisseur, in fact I rarely drink wine but this weekend I practiced the principle of when in Rome… when in Napa, I drink wine.

The original plan for this weekend was to rent a tandem bicycle and peddle around Napa with our friends.

The rain changed our plans.

Instead we went to our friend’s house, had a glass of wine in front of the fire place and headed to the nearby town of St. Helena for dinner at a|k|a Bistro.  a|k|a Bistro is a hip and fun place with original items on the menu.

Dinner started off with a glass of Marc Murray Ranch Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir. I approved. As I said in the disclaimer I am not a big wine drinker so I’m not going to be using any of those fluffy terms to describe the wine. I either like it or I don’t.

Our friends told us we HAD to try the Crispy Portabella Fries with Truffle Aioli, so we did. They were SO good. You have GOT to try them too!

I had the pan seared salmon on top of mashed potatoes and autumn vegetables. I LOVE mashed potatoes so pretty much any dish served with mashed potatoes makes me happy. The salmon and the veggies were tasty too.

What I like about a|k|a is that they specialize in farm fresh food.

After dinner we strolled down the street to Cameo Cinema, an old small town theatre owned by solopreneur Cathy Buck. One night it’s a movie theater, another night a concert hall. This night was a concert with classical guitarist named Joe Galambos who was playing a Robert Ruck guitar. (My personal favorite guitars are Wolverton guitars – but I’m biased and that is a story for another day.) The music Joe Galambos played was beautiful and he’s very talented. The theater was also very cool, it has double love seat style theater chairs so you can snuggle up with your honey during the show.

We spent the night at our friend’s house in Napa. The next day we… to be continued.

This is half of the game hen and autumn vegetable dish my friends ordered. They shared.

This is what Celia ordered. I think it was short ribs and fries. The fries were delicious. (I snuck a few.)

1. Take ferry to San Francisco and walk around the ferry building and then go ice skating in the Embarcadero.
2. Walk around Tiburon.
3. Take a ferry to Angel Island and go for a hike.
4. Go shopping on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley.
5. Visit the Camera Obscura in San Francisco. (The giant camera)
6. Walk around Chinatown, be adventurous and try some Dim Sum.
7. Visit a farm in Petaluma! Learn about where your food comes from.
8. Walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.
9. Go to Golden Gate Park Japanese Tea Garden, Botanical Gardens, Conservatory of Flowers and so much more.
10. After Golden Gate Park you can walk around Haight Street and see the famous Haight/Ashbury neighborhood.
11. Go for a Mountain Bike ride in Marin County
12. Tuesday Night Comedy Night in Mill Valley with Mark Pitta.
13. Take a drive to Stinson Beach and keep driving to find the secret town of Bolinas.
14. Go wine tasting in Napa and then try some delicious vegetarian food.

Happy Holidays!

If you have any suggestions for fun and unique things I didn’t list here please leave a comment letting us know.

Gabrielson Park firework show in Sausalito starts at 9:00PM on July 4th

Marin County Fair in San Rafael
Firework show every night July 1 –July 5 Starting at 9:30PM

The City of San Francisco Firework Show at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.
Starts approximately at 9:30

Jack London Square – Oakland
Time: 9:15 – 9:35

Berkeley Marina (end of the Berkeley Pie)
Starts at 9:30pm

Wine Country Fireworks
Napa River

Peninsula
Starts at 9:30pm can be seen above the Port of Redwood City

Here is an more extensive list of firework shows around the Bay Area from Marin Mommies.

We met our friends at Ubuntu which happens to be a vegetarian restaurant / yoga studio. I was expecting to walk in to a new-agey-hippy-dippy place (please note I have nothing against new-agey-hippy-dippy places) but was surprised to find it felt almost like a big city metropolitan restaurant: high ceilings, sculptures throughout, art hanging on the wall, modern architecture.

It seems Ubuntu’s menu changes so you don’t always get the same thing. The waitress informed us that tonight was a small plate night and she recommended we ordered a variety of plates to share.

We started with a salad. I think it was the Cool Garden Greens and Lemongrass Salad (our friend ordered and I forget to write down the names). This salad was amazing! It was served on top of some kind of crispy very thin flat bread type thing and was made up of flowers and herbs. We joked that maybe it was the centerpiece for the table and not really the salad. We were pleasantly surprised how sweet and crisp it was. My past experience with any flowers in salads has always been kind of a bitter taste but not this! This salad was absolutely delicious!

The next dish was the English Peas with White Chocolate. This also sounded strange to me but OMG it was amazing!

Unfortunately, I forgot my camera (again) but the food was so beautifully displayed I took some photos with my iPhone that just don’t do it justice but hopefully you get the idea of how beautiful this food was displayed.

We ordered a few additional, heartier dishes: The rustic Rancho Gordo Yellow Eyed Bean Stew and the Mushroom Pizza Bianco with Hand Pulled Mozerella. Both were scrumptious and filling.

After dinner we decided to stroll around town for a bit and have some Port. I’ll leave our adventures in Port for another day…

PS. I’m always looking for suggestions of new places to try. If you have a favorite restaurant anywhere in the Bay Area please let me know.

Ubuntu is located at:
1140 Main Street
Napa, California 94559
www.ubuntunapa.com
707.251.5656