Monday, December 15, 2008

North Bay Miscellaneous

Bolinas is a funky little town on a peninsular just north of Stinson Beach in Marin County. The only road into town is unmarked, so as not to attract visitors. Of course this gets my attention. We looked for the town last year when we visited Point Rayes seashore, but missed the road; this time we got directions from the locals and determined to find it.

We did. It was town's artists' open studio during Thanksgiving weekend and there was quite a crowd. The weather was exceptionally nice, and the out of town surfers added to the traffic too.

The town is very dog friendly. There were happy hounds running around, crossing streets on their own. We didn't have time to make it to Dogtown, but it's indeed a place, not just a cute name.

The surf shop's slogan is "Live and Let Live", well said for the town.



We walked around town, had lunch and visited a few studios. Lots of spirituality inspired paintings,
sculptures, pottery, tapestry, etc., nothing stood out. Even found a small yarn shop that sells a variety of goods, including yarn. I learned from the shop hop that if what's on my back is more advanced than any item displayed in the shop, then most likely I would not find anything interesting. On this particular day I had on my well worn Frode from Elsebeth Lavold's viking book. The shop was all about fat yarn on big needle quick knits, similar to the level of artwork we saw in the rest of the town.

We live and let live.



On our first day while driving around looking for Olive Press we found this nice chocolate shop in Jack London Village in Glen Ellen. The shop is called Wine Country Chocolates, ran by a mother-daughter team. They had fresh truffle fillings for tasting every day, absolutely delicious.

The price was pretty good too. A custom box of 12 truffles was only $20.



While in Sonoma we took Henry to Traintown. I had brochure from this place in the days when Henry was a train fanatic (from about two years old to seven or eight), but we never managed a visit. We went for a ride on the train, which stopped at a miniature western town, with a real petting zoo.



While we couldn't afford to eat at The French Laundry (see my previous post, and as Lesley said in the comment, it would cost about $700 for dinner for two. I need a stronger stomach for that), we did find our Thanksgiving dinner at WildFox in Novado. I had grouper with crab cakes, and creme brulee for dessert, while the guys did the American thing and enjoyed turkey with all the trimmings. The kids' portion was so big that Henry made two dinners out of it.

3 comments:

Karin said...

Having the occasional truffle is the one thing I miss since I can;t have anything with dairy in it anymore...but that sounds delicious!
What a nice trip.

Sarah said...

We used to go to Train Town when the kids were little. They still ask about going back some time.

Lesley said...

Field trip to Train Town!
I think it's so hilarious that the brochure for the park declares, "One-fifth the size of Disneyland!"