Going Sideways in Temecula Valley

So, mor spent the weekend with us. We set her up on the futon in our living room. It's not the Hyatt, but she didn't complain. On Friday night, P. & R. drove into San Diego and all of us went out for dinner at the Fishery, which like the name says is, aside from being a great seafood restaurant, also a fish market during the day. It's in PB just north of us.

On saturday we had a nice breakfast at home with prosciutto and melon, home style bruschettas, goat cheese and bread and "Boursin". Then took out to Temecula where we hung out for a while at P's house, then went wine tasting in Temecula Valley. They have an extraordinary number of new wineries there, and a big "wine tasting business" by now, as far as I can see. They have great facilities, but are maybe a bit touristy compared with the wineries I visited in France ...

We only tried a couple of wineries, actually, but that was really enough for the day. Enough, in any case, to make mor a little "tipsy" and to turn C. a little silly. By the time I asked him (at the second winery) whether he would prefer the Merlot or the Cabernet Sauvignon, and he answered he didn't remember, whereas we just finished tasting them, I realised that he was out wine drinkin', not tastin'. All in all, we probably tried almost twenty wines, but that included everything from champagne to red port, going through white, rosé, red and desert wines.

Back at the house we talked with Cedric for a while (their new adopted garden cat), then went out to dinner again at the Mekong River. Got great spring rolls, thai beef salad, vermicelli, kung pao, green curry and orange chicken. Then spent the night at P's.

Early sunday morning we drove up to Newport with mor. On the way back we stopped in Laguna Beach for breakfast, then slowly made our way down the coast, stopping every once in a while at furniture stores. In Oceanside we visited the Farmer's Market, in Solana Beach we strolled through the shopping center, in Encenitas we stopped again at the quirky, hippie market, with the soaps and the pearl necklaces, and the cotton skirts and the encens and the new age stuff ...

We were finally too lazy to go to the movies like we meant to when we got home, but we rented one on DVD. It was really good: A very long engagement with actress Audrey Tatou and director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. If you liked his earlier films: Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children, Amélie, then you will like this one. It's not quite as quirky as the first two, and a little darker than the last one, but the story is touching and the composed footage from Paris of the 20's is amazing.