My mom treated us to a night in California’s wine country, a place I hated as a kid but am okay with as an adult. Other than swimming pools there is just not much there for children other than to be carted from one wine tasting to another by tipsy parents.
We did not visit any wineries. The concept is just as appealing to me as a pub crawl and I have never understood the point of that either. Instead, we spent some time in the hot springs and tried the tasting menu at a nice restaurant. I just had to sit there and convince my daughter that the other diners did not want to see her dance routine. The wine came to me.
Calistoga is a very picturesque town with a main street of small shops and restaurants. Not much else going on but after seven months of living in a country that has the same weather report every day it was nice to see signs of the season changing. The leaves have changed from green to red, the police officers are wearing pants instead of shorts to hand out parking tickets to the tourists.
Calistoga, California
The aliens have landed. We saw this mannequin in Thailandand also in Calistoga, California.
The area produces wine, mineral water and not much else. We saw a nice girl’s dress in a boutique but it was made in Vietnam and it seemed silly to spend $45 when we might visit there in the next month or two.
I also spotted the same mannequin we saw in Thailand last month. Perhaps this is how the aliens will invade.
As it turns out, we found some beautiful dresses at the wet market in Singapore yesterday for $10 each. When you think about the profit margin on Asian-made clothing sold in America it is a bit mind-blowing and a little bit heart-warming. You know, the part about clothing made by children, for children. It’s a small world after all!
The downside to the trip was that my mom was not able to go swimming. After months of successful chemo treatments for lung cancer, her t-cell count plummeted. It is back to normal levels now but at the time she had no or little immunity to fight infections and could not risk going in the pools.
We lucked out and had perfect weather the entire time and headed back the next day to the Bay Area.
Collecting sticks in Calistoga
