Last week, I was in Indianapolis for work. We were on a site visit of both the Convention Center and the brand new Lucas Oil Stadium. It was a pretty fun trip for several reasons: great city, an inside look at a pretty cool stadium, and great food.
Great City
Indianapolis reminds me of Cleveland. It’s an underappreciated city with lots to offer, but people dismiss it because it’s in the Midwest. Now, it could be that I’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid, but I like Indy. Lots of old architecture, including ornate churches, that is missing from the sterile-strip-mall-vastness that is Orange County. Its downtown has a lot of personality with cool little bars and (non-chain!) restaurants. It’s a shame that so much of the city’s personality is covered with snow during our show.
Pretty Cool Stadium
Great Food
A real NY deli in the middle of Indiana? Believe it. Shapiro’s is the real deal. I had half a pastrami sandwich, half reuben, broccoli salad and boston cream pie. It was the best reuben I’d ever had and will probably go on a mission of eating reubens to see if anything else can compare to Shapiro’s.
Yes – I ate it all. And I loved it.
I'm doing a major purge of the condo this weekend and next. If you, or anyone you know, needs wine glasses, drink glasses, or matching plates & bowls - PLEASE let me know. All items are gently used. I'm going to take everything to Goodwill, but I thought that I'd offer it out to friends/family beforehand.
*big sigh*
Today is the first day since June 25 that I’ve been able to take a breath. And a short breath it will be, because tomorrow starts another long stretch of busy-busy-busy time that includes 2 weddings and a bridal shower within a single 24 hour period, a trip to a water park and then a trip to Indianapolis.
I don’t know how it happened, but this summer has flown by. Between the wedding, the honeymoon, concerts, birthday parties, Sean’s various work trips and out-of-town guests, I feel as though I haven’t had time to slow down and relax. So I'm going to utilize this one free evening for everything its worth. This includes such lovely tasks like laundry, catching up on some of the shows currently clogging the DVR, and playing some serious catch-up with various blogs.
And did I mention that Sean’s gone? So I have the entire house to myself after a summer of feeling constantly crowded by people or always on the road. It’s nice.
So far, the best part of the day has been standing in the middle of Target, chatting with E. in China (via my cell phone). It was totally worth draining all the battery out of my phone just to chat with her for a few minutes. *waves hi to E*
We signed up for a wine tour with a company called The Grape Line. This tour is great because everyone hops onto a little bus and the bus driver and tour guide take you to 4 wineries in Temecula wine country. Since this was our 3rd time on the tour (it’s the ‘go to’ activity every time someone comes out to visit us in CA) – it was pretty old hat for us. Here’s a breakdown of the events.
Holiday Inn Express
Get picked up at the Holiday Inn Express by the bus and meet our tour guide, Phillip. Since both the bus and our party arrived 15 minutes early, the day got off to a great – ahead of schedule – start. Then we left and picked up the other 10 guests on our tour at various hotels in Temecula. Then we hit the road for our first winery – Callaway.
Callaway
Used to be owned by the same Callaway family that owns Callaway golf items. I don’t know golf, so this doesn’t mean anything to me. The wine was great. Very crisp whites and full-bodied reds. Had my first Sangiovese – and now have a new type of red to explore.
We completely missed the tour of this winery – we were too busy talking and sampling. But that was fine for the three of us (Sean and I had already taken that tour) and my aunt was fine with skipping it so we gave her the condensed verbal tour: you grow grapes, you pick grapes, you put them in a machine; the machine crushes them, put it into barrels, barrels sit for a while, the wine’s put in bottles, you buy the bottle, you drink the wine. Viola.
Wilson’s Creek
Ahhhh – the Disneyland of wineries. I don’t like Wilson’s Creek. Like most things in Southern California, they put more emphasis on the appearance and ignore the substance. After reading the “family history” pamphlet they put on our table – I dislike it even more. Basically, a family with money got bored in the late 90s and decided they wanted to do something. Owning a vineyard was the popular thing to do in California at the time, so they bought a vineyard. They didn’t know what they were doing so they paid someone else to grow the grapes and make the wine for them. They built a ton of buildings on the land so they could have events and it seems like they sell the wine as an after thought. The woman who greeted us was the daughter of the owners. She was an over-medicated mess who made us guess how old she was (and I’m convinced she lied about her age). Lovely.
It’s worth noting that they were very stingy with their tasting size.
Bella Vista
My favorite. This is the oldest vineyard in Temecula. It’s a no frills, focus on the wine vineyard. Full bodied reds and no pretentiousness.
Mount Palomar
This was the only winery that was new to us and I really enjoyed it. I had a delicious cream sherry and their port was my favorite of all the ports I tried on the trip. Palomar has a very nice set up – lots of shaded outdoor seating (which is a big plus considering Temecula gets into the triple digits) and live music. It was a very relaxing, laid back winery.
All in all, it was a great trip.
This past Saturday, downtown Santa Ana sponsored the Santa Ana Pub Crawl. 6 restaurants in the burgeoning downtown participated by offering specials on food and drinks to people participating in the crawl. We were given ‘crawler cards’ at the first restaurant we went to and each additional restaurant would then stamp it once you bought something. At the end of the evening, you could turn your card in to win fabulous free prizes.
I’m really glad our friends told us about the crawl. Sean and I discovered a bunch of new restaurants that we really enjoyed and if it hadn’t been for the crawl, we wouldn’t have ever known about them. Lucky for us, but unlucky for our wallets, we discovered at least 1 restaurant (Jason’s) and 1 bar (The Crosby) that we want to try again.
I really like Santa Ana. But too many people in Orange County think it’s a nothing more than a series of barrios. One – those people are fools. And Two – they don’t know what they’re talking about. Downtown Santa Ana is awesome and I can't wait to make to hang out in the area more often.
Friday night
Took the red-eye from LAX to San Juan. Sat 2 rows behind Oscar de la Hoya. Sean refused to believe me that it was de la Hoya until every single guy who passed him, loudly whispered to the person in front of them, who they saw.
On Saturday, after our plane landed in Tortola, we took a quick ferry ride over to Virgin Gorda.
Our home-sweet-home for the week (as taken from the ocean).
The view from our living room and patio. The Caribbean is so different from the Pacific; the water was incredibly calm (no pounding surf like in So Cal) and was so warm it felt like walking into a bathtub.
Our week consisted of lots of lounging…
… reading…
… and snorkeling.
We did manage to drag ourselves out of the condo for a day – we rented a sail boat (complete with skipper) for half a day. Here's the boat we were on. It was much larger in person.
The skipper even let Sean help out.
He sailed us around the various islands, dropped anchor just off the coast of one of the smaller islands so we could scuba dive while he made us lunch, and then we continued to sail around for the next few hours.
After spending a week drinking as many rum-filled drinks we could possibly create, staying in the water until we turned to prunes, reading until our eyes crossed and generally being as lazy as we possibly could, it was time to go home.
Or so we thought. Thanks to the uber-smart pilot on our first flight off Tortola, our entire plane missed their connections. This meant we got to spend the night in the wonderful Best Western hotel in the San Juan airport. But rather than sit in our hotel room and mope, we hopped in a cab, went to Old San Juan and ate dinner at a fabulous tapas bar.
The sangria helped take the sting out of missing our flight home and made our night in San Juan all the more enjoyable.
Pretty Cool Stadium
Great Food
Yes – I ate it all. And I loved it.
