California Trip {Day 4}

We left Paso Robles on Wednesday morning. We stopped for donuts and coffee at a little shop that I forgot to photograph! Oh well....my coffee wasn't that great.

We also wanted to ship some more wine that we had purchased rather than dealing with it. Our hotel in Paso Robles recommended a company called Safe Haven that will come to your hotel and pick up your wine and ship it to you. We found out about it at check out, so we decided to just go directly to them with our wine. We had 4 bottles of wine and 1 bottle of olive oil. We decided to stop at Albertson's to pick up a 6th bottle. We figured that if we were sending 5 bottles already, they would probably have to use a box that would hold 6 anyway.

Now with the wine out of the way, it was time to head north to our next destination, San Jose. I can't tell you how many times I would sing "Do you know the way to San Jose" to my husband. I think he started tuning me out after a while. I was no Dionne Warwick!

We took a little detour on our way to San Jose to have lunch in Monterey at the Fisherman's Wharf.


The boats at Monterey.

We ate lunch at an Italian Seafood place called Isabella's. The chef at the restaurant, Tene Shake has a cooking tv show called Coastal Cooking with Tene Shake. He was there and asked us how our food was. He was dressed awfully nice though, I don't think he prepared my clam chowder or my fish & chips. I guess that's what happens to chefs when they become successful.

Here is Chris at our table which overlooked the bay.

These noisy sea lions could be heard all through our lunch.

A picture of us using Chris' arm as a tri-pod.

Sometime mid afternoon, we arrived at our next hotel, The Dolce Hayes Mansion. Our room was ready, so we checked in and got settled.


The 2 main attractions we wanted to see in San Jose were the Winchester Mystery House and the Computer History Museum. Since it was already mid to late afternoon, we were afraid that we would be out of luck for the rest of the day, but lo and behold, the Winchester Mystery House was open late!


For those unfamiliar with the Winchester Mystery House, it was built by Sarah Winchester, daughter to the Winchester Gun fortune. She was a believer in ghosts & spirits and built the house because the spirits told her to do so. The house was under construction 7 days a week for 38 years. There are lots of quirky features to the house such as stairs that lead to nowhere and doors that open to nothing. There are 160 rooms in the house.
We took a tour of the house and the behind the scenes tour. The behind the scenes tour took us in the basement and other areas not on the regular tour. It was our lucky night, we were the only ones on both tours, so we had our own private tours.

Here's Chris waiting between tours.

And me

And a picture of both of us taken by our private tour guide.

A different view of the house.

The front door that was supposedly only used 3 times.

One more view

It was about 8 after we finished up at the Winchester Mystery house. We really didn't feel like going to another restaurant. So we stopped at a grocery and picked up some cheese, hummus, crackers, & fruit and ate back at the hotel while watching Get Him to the Greek on HBO.

California Trip {Day 2}

We started the second day of our trip with breakfast at the Paso Robles Inn's Coffee Shop.


Then we drove through the countryside to check out some of the wineries.However, it was still morning and as much as we may enjoy a nice glass of wine, we just weren't feeling it at 10:00 am. Luckily, my sister had suggested an olive oil tasting room, so we made that our first stop.

Pasolivo was the olive ranch that was recommended to us. We've been using more olive oil in our daily cooking, so we thought it would be fun to see and taste different types of olive oil.



We arrived right at 10am when they opened and we were the only ones there. We asked to see the olive oil press and and equipment. Compared to wine making, it seemed like an easier product to manufacture. Maybe one day we will buy an olive ranch and make our own olive oil.

It was fun to taste the different types of olive oil. They gave us a little bag of french bread for dipping. We ended up buying a bottle of their kitchen olive oil and a tin of the citrus flavored olive oil. We also bought a jar of tampenade and some candied almonds that looked like olives.

The olive trees.


After the olive oil tasting, it was about 10:30 am. A much more reasonable time to be tasting wine, right??? Looking at our map, the Justin winery that my sister recommended to us was not too far.

The facility was beautiful! They also have a bed and breakfast that I had come across when searching for our accommodations.

Wine tasting has changed since we had been to Napa 14 years ago. Most wineries charge a tasting fee. Chris was okay with that because if we paid, he didn't feel obligated to purchase any wine afterward, though we always did. But we did because we wanted to, not because we felt obligated to do so! At the Justin winery, it was $10 per person for tasting, but you got to keep your wine glasses. We thought that was a nice souvenir.

Now if you look closely, you can see a little cut on the bridge of my nose. I got that the day before when gravity caused the door of the big "old people" car we rented to swing open and hit me in the nose. It looks so small and barely noticeable, but boy did it hurt! The bridge of my nose was tender for most of the trip. And it bled a lot, too. I am so thankful that it wasn't broken


Here is a picture of us that was not taken with the timer feature of our camera! A driver for a wine tour offered to take our picture. Here we are in front of the vineyard at Justin.

We drove back into downtown Paso Robles after our stop at Justin Winery. We enjoyed the scenic drive immensely. Somewhere we read that there were over 200 vineyards in Paso Robles.

Back at our hotel, we walked to Downtown Brew for lunch. It is the upstairs establishment in the picture.


In the spirit of "tasting", we each ordered a beer sampler. My favorite one was the one on the far left - it was a blueberry ale.


After lunch we went back to the hotel for a nap. Between the 3 hour time change and the effects of the beer, we were sleepy. We were awakened after an hour by the housekeeper wanting to clean our room. We went for a walk around downtown, then decided we should go to another winery.


A friend of mine from high school whom I have become reacquainted with on Facebook, was in Paso Robles a few weeks earlier. She recommended the Eberle Winery, so we made that our second winery.

The word Eberle is the German word for small boar, so the winery uses a boar as its mascot.

The tasting at Eberle winery was complimentary. See how happy Chris is about that!

We went on the tour of the winery and the cave where the wine is stored.


Here is my husband looking out onto the vineyards at Eberle.


For dinner that evening, we went to McClintock's Saloon in downtown Paso Robles. It was suggested to us by the woman who served us our wine at the Eberle winery. There was a flyer at Eberle for their Father's Day dinner. One of the food items listed on the flyer for the dinner was "tri- tip" We had seen tri-tip listed other places in California, but had never heard of it before. We asked her about it and she told us that McClintock's had a delicious tri-tip steak. Later, Chris looked it up and found that the tri tip is the same thing as the bottom sirloin. We just had never heard it referred to the tri-tip before. The same cut of meat, just different parts of the country.

And that is the end of day 2 of our trip.