Celebrating 7 Years!

Matt and I celebrated our 7 year (seven!) anniversary on May 31st with a nice mini-trip to San Francisco, which is also were we took are very first trip as a couple back in 2006 ;)  Since we saw most of the sights in 2006, we felt no need to re-visit them and really just focused our trip on relaxing and doing the things we like to do - explore, eat and drink and watch baseball.

Thursday Night

We drove in Thursday and had dinner reservations at The Slanted Door (modern Vietnamese cooking) for our official anniversary dinner.  The restaurant itself was modernly designed and had an energetic vibe, and the food was delicious!!  We tried sea urchin for an appetizer and were pleasantly surprised.  We also enjoyed grilled calamari, duck and tri-colored cauliflower for the rest of our meal and a flourless chocolate cake for dessert.  It was a lovely anniversary dinner.

Sea Urchin, which tastes better than it looks

Duck (always a favorite with us) and pickled veggies

Cauliflower (with bacon!)

Grilled calamari, on the spicy side

Flourless chocolate cake

We sat on the water, and enjoyed this lovely (if foggy) view :)

Friday

Friday we enjoyed a wine tour that took us to two really cute, small family-run wineries.  The third winery was Sutter Home, which was a little bit of a disappointment, but we had such a nice day at the other two wineries and the cute little town we stopped off in for lunch, that we weren't too worried about it by the time we got to Sutter Home ;)

Winery #1 - Nicholson Ranch

Winery #2 - Madonna Estate

Lunch in Yountville

Yountville is actually 'famous' for its multiple Michelin-starred restaurants, including The French Laundry. We did not go to any of these Michelin-starred restaurants but ate lunch at a very cute place called Hurley's and enjoyed a nice lunch and more local wine.  Then, I stopped by Kollar Chocolates for dessert; the chocolates were yummy :)

Everywhere you look, there are grape vines growing

Winery #3 - Sutter Home

Friday Night Baseball

Friday night, we attended the San Francisco Giants versus Atlanta Braves game at AT&T Park.  It was cold!  In fact, my only complaint about San Fran is the weather; it is so cold and so windy all of the time.  Anyways, we made it through about the 5th inning, and then we moved into the stadium bar to finish out the game inside.  The Giants won - YAY! - and we had lots of fun :)

Saturday

Saturday we just walked around the city and visited some breweries and beer shops that had been suggested to us by friends.  At Mikkeller Bar, we discovered sour beers, which are sudsy, fruity and fun.  All of the beers we had at Mikkeller Bar were great - highly recommend it!  We also visited City Beer Store, which offered a lot of local brews and other California beers.  We sampled several beers here that we thoroughly enjoyed as well.

Mikkeller Bar

City Beer Store

Saturday Night Baseball

Saturday night, we took the BART out to Oakland and saw the Oakland A's versus the New York Yankees at O.co Coliseum.  The weather was great; it is amazing how just getting a little bit away from the water makes a difference (we notice this in LA, too).  However, I have to say, the O.co Coliseum is not a pretty venue, kind of ugly actually (see below).  We did not stay for the whole game as it was not really that exciting, but we still had a good time :)

Sunday

Sunday morning was our actual anniversary, but also the day we needed to drive back home. So, we had a very nice anniversary brunch and then started on our way back.  It was a great mini-vacation and a relaxing way to spend our 7 year anniversary :)