Last weekend Mike and I took off from work Friday, dropped the kids at my parents, and headed to Healdsburg to celebrate our 5th wedding Anniversary. We decided that Friday would be our beer day and Saturday our wine day. On our drive up we stopped at Lagunitas - which crazily doesn't open until 2!? We were both a little bummed but we were so hungry we just headed on Russian River. Since the wait was an hour and a half (this is at 12:30 now) we put our name in and headed to 3rd Street Ale Works. Craft beer is really popular now thats for sure! Just as we finished our beers and appetizers at 3rd Street, our table opened up at Russian River so we headed back there for a giant sampler of all their beers on tap.
20 Beer Sampler!
Since I was driving, Mike did most of the drinking until we got to the sours, and then I took over. They make some of the best sour beer I have had! YUM! We finished our drive and checked into our hotel and hit the pool for a bit before headed back out for the brewery we were most excited about, Bear Republic. We made sure our server knew were intended to be there a while and made friends :)
Starting with another sampler. Mike had the specialties and I went with the sours and barrel aged beers. My favorite is still tartar rouge, and thankfully I know a few places around us that serve it.
Round two of our food at Bear Republic. The first was a charcuterie plate, with wild boar sausage. Delish! Then came crab, bacon and jalapeno mac-and-cheese and wild game chili. I'm full just thinking about that deliciousness.
I forgot to have the server take our picture, so selfie it is!
Back in the room we opened a special bottle of champagne from Chandon.
Classy!
The next day we slowly dragged ourselves out of the room and to an incredible breakfast at The Perish, which my friend Nikki recommended. Seriously, go there if you are ever in Healdsburg! Then off to wine tasting. We were planning on doing one actual winery then heading downtown to walk to tasting rooms. But we got the royal treatment at Truett Hurst (which we joined), who then sent us to Kokomo (which we also joined) and we had quickly hit one in-between, so needless to say we didn't make it back downtown for more tastings. Oh man were those some good wines!
More selfies
If only we could go up for every event! We LOVED this winery! Besides the amazing wine, the people were all insanely friendly and it's laid back vibe was totally our speed.
Our wine hall from the weekend. We also came home with almost 2 cases of beer ;) The people at Kokomo gave us that bottle of wine in the middle after writing "Happy Anniversary" and all signing it!
After a short wine induced nap, we headed to dinner at another incredible recommendation from Truett Hurst, Willi's Seafood. SO. Much. Good. Food. We stuffed ourselves silly and decided we needed to walk around downtown before heading in for the night. We didn't make it very far when we walked by Bear Republic. It was calling to us so we decided to pop in for one more beer :)
I once again failed at getting someone to take our picture
Sunday we had more delicious food at a little restaurant called Topy's Kitchen in Petaluma. We got lucky and scooped up a cancelled reservation spot since every place was booked for Mother's Day. I was missing the kids a lot so we ate pretty quickly then headed home to scoop them up. We finished the day just hanging at home in the backyard and Mike cooked us dinner. Pretty great Mother's Day if you ask me, and perfect end to a pretty prefect weekend :)
