Hey, hey! How was your weekend? I'm writing this on a Monday night, which is late for my usual Monday early AM posts, but today was a super busy day. Just another manic Monday friends! Any who, backing it up to last Friday, my weekend started off with a tropical acai bowl date with a friend... ...an evening tennis session with my hubby, and then a Saturday morning HIIT workout, walk with my pup + yoga practice. I had planned on having this nicely healthy start to the weekend because I knew what was coming up next: eating and drinking the entire rest of Saturday, because A and I went on our very first food tour! I had recently mentioned us doing a few fun activities as pre-birthday celebrations for each of us before we travel to the east coast and spend our actual birthdays ... [Read More]
California travel index
Palm Springs Trip Recap: Where We Ate, Drank & Explored
Hi there! After a long weekend full of Miami sun and bachelorette festivities (and perhaps a few too many drinks!), I'm back home in SoCal. I think it's going to take me a few days to catch up on sleep and recharge from all of the fun, but it was an awesome girls' trip celebrating my best friends' upcoming nuptials! I'm going to recap some of the awesomeness of the weekend soon, but today I want to share with you guys a post about some of the spots I visited during my Palm Springs weekend getaway with my hubby a few weekends ago. Let's get to it! Where We Stayed Palm Springs is a desert vacation town about 2 hours from my house. We wound up visiting the area for the weekend when the company we own a timeshare with, Welk Resorts, offered us a complimentary villa for a couple ... [Read More]
Wine Tasting in the Santa Ynez Valley
Happy Friday friends! Since the weekend is almost here, I thought that today I'd talk about one of my favorite weekend activities: wine tasting. Besides just loving to try new wines and compare and contrast different varietals and vintages, I enjoy visiting wineries because I like to hear firsthand the stories behind the wineries and their products. There tends to be so much passion put into winemaking, and I love hearing about it. I also am in love with the beauty that typically surrounds wine country. This love affair first started when I studied abroad in Italy in college, met a local restaurant owner who offered to take two of my friends and me on a winery tour, and spent a day in the Italian countryside sipping wine with winery owners who spit their wine out in a seemingly ... [Read More]
Solvang: California’s Taste of Denmark
One of the things that I love about living in California is that there are so many cool areas to go on road trips to, both within the state and in neighboring ones. I've been itching to go on a weekend getaway, and so at the end of last week, my husband and I journeyed to the Santa Barbara area for a few days of wine tasting, hiking, and exploring the Danish capital of America - a town called Solvang. I like traveling to unique little places, and Solvang is definitely just that. It's a quaint, Danish-styled town in the Santa Ynez Valley that was founded a little over 100 years ago, and is home to a population of just 5,000+ people. Solvang is about a 4-hour drive from where I live in northern San Diego County. Pretty much the whole drive, you're traveling right up the Pacific Coast ... [Read More]
San Diego Restaurant Week Fun: Del Mar’s CUCINA enoteca + Taste of Thai
Last week was an exciting time for a San Diego foodie who enjoys a good deal like myself: the city's 2015 Restaurant Week! Over the course of 7 days, diners can enjoy discounted prix fixe lunch and dinner menus at the more than 180 participating eateries in 12 regions throughout San Diego County. Every year that I've been in town for it, I love taking the opportunity to grab a bite at a few of the participating restaurants that I've never been to before for a few bucks cheaper. The first restaurant that I dined at during Restaurant Week was Del Mar's CUCINA enoteca -- an eatery featuring California-inspired dishes with an Italian flair. CUCINA enoteca opened in 2013, and I had heard good things about it. Zagat recently called Cucina Enoteca one of the hottest restaurants in ... [Read More]
Hiking & Camping on Catalina Island
Happy October! Tomorrow marks 5 years since I married my man. Normally I'm not huge on anniversary celebrations, but since 5 years feels like a milestone, I wanted to commemorate the occasion by doing something memorable and fun together. Instead of going on a relaxing weekend getaway to wine country or something obviously romantic like most normal couples probably do, us nuts decided to embark on what turned out to be the toughest endurance challenge of my life hiking around Catalina Island. Buckle up for this long weekend recap friends - it was most definitely an adventure with a roller coaster of emotions! Catalina is a gorgeous little island off the coast of SoCal that has this sort of Mediterranean vibe to it. I visited there for the first time earlier this year with my mom for ... [Read More]
