Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Our Day Off

From A:

J and I both had yesterday off from work in observance of Independence Day.  We took a day trip to Orlando to visit J's friend Jeff and A's friend Colleen.  We had our camera but didn't take pictures, which we should have remembered to do, so I apologize for the lack of visual stimulation (other than online photos) on this post.

On our way to Orlando we stopped at the Lakeridge Winery.  We picked a good day to stop there because they were harvesting grapes!  This is something we've never seen on any of our trips to Lakeridge or in Napa Valley when we were there.  The winery has a big tractor that picks the grapes very, very quickly.  It basically goes along the rows and shakes the vines to make the grapes fall off.  The grapes are put into big square containers, weighed, and then dumped into the pressing machine which presses the grapes to extract the juice, separates out the leaves and vines, and sends the juice and pulp mixture to another tank for more pressing.


The grapes they were harvesting yesterday are hybrids used in their Blanc du Bois wine.  We sampled that particular wine, but neither of us were particularly fond of it.  It wasn't bad, it just wasn't among the numerous other varieties they make that are exceptionally good.

Our next destination on the trip was lunch with Jeff.  We went to First Watch which we had been to once before.  Although it was lunch, I couldn't resist ordering from their breakfast menu and had a wonderful omelet with turkey, feta cheese, spinach, and tomatoes.  J had a sandwich and tomato basil soup, which he has become a connoisseur of since he orders it just about anywhere that serves it.


Finally, we visited Colleen, her husband, and their precious 3 month old baby boy.  We got in some good baby playing / feeding / burping / changing time before we went out for an adults only dinner (ahh, the joy of grandparents willing to babysit for the evening).  Dinner was at Seasons 52 and was fantastic.  I had the tiger shrimp penne pasta and J had the wood-roasted pork tenderloin.  There was also an amazing dessert lineup to choose from, which basically looked like this:


How's that for a great day off?

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like a fun weekend. :( for no baby Isaac pictures. We didn't do too much because Daniel was teaching, but it was nice to just chill.

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