California Nuts: Part 2

With San Diego and Laguna Beach merely pleasant memories to the South of us, we spent the next day in Huntington Beach. Famous not only for being the official "Surf City, USA," Huntington Beach is also known for its pier. At 1,850 feet long, it's one of the longest public piers on the West Coast. (Of course, the city's most important claim to fame by far is being the birth place of my husband).



We didn't allow a bit of the morning gray haze stop us from walking down Huntington's Main Street and down to the end of the pier to eat at Ruby's, one of our favorite local haunts for the good coffee, great whole wheat nutty pancakes, and amazing views. (Sure enough, surfers were spotted).



The rest of the day unfolded at a leisurely pace for a change, with puttering through tony Newport Beach's Fashion Island (east coasters, think Tyson's Corner, but an outdoor mall with coastal views), as well as a drive through Balboa Island, a tiny island jam-packed with houses, marinas, and cute shops.

Even weighed down by the approximately 1 million pounds of See's Candy we purchased between us, the little Mustang convertible was able to get us back to Huntington Beach where we enjoyed dinner in town with local family.



The next morning we hit Sugar Shack - a staple for all HB locals - and did the crazy. The unthinkable. That which all locals tried to warn us away from: driving into Los Angeles.

Actually, despite the dire warnings, the drive wasn't too bad, and we enjoyed the chance to check out the famous Santa Monica Pier on a relatively un-crowded Thursday morning including a ride on the iconic Ferris Wheel.



Great views up and down LA / Santa Monica beach...

From there we went to our hotel - the Andaz at West Hollywood. Thanks to my husband's gazillion Hyatt points, we were upgraded to a room with snazzy views and plied with copious amounts of free wine (of which we accepted one glass but cut it off there since it was only 1pm... though 5 o'clock somewhere...)



After hotel room view ogling, it was off to don our tourist hat to visit the Chinese Theater / Walk of Fame (think stars and hand prints in the sidewalk), then up into the Hollywood hills to visit the Griffith Observatory.

Opened in 1935, Griffith Observatory is an iconic LA landmark, and offers sweeping views of LA. We arrived in time to take in the daylight views as well as linger through a spectacular sunset.






Night descends at Griffith...



While the morning would see us winging our way back to the east coast, the few days away was a lovely chance to recharge, obtain a slight sunburn (LA traffic + sunshine + convertible = dangerous), enjoy Auntie/Niecy bonding, and soak in the beautiful California sights and amazingly green smoothies.

Until next time, California!

California Nuts: Part 1

There comes a time in every parent's life when the need to get away becomes a tangible thing. Not because we don't love our children, cherish their smiles, or look forward to sleepy bedtime book-reading snuggles. But because we wear down, from 6am weekend wakeups, to harried "no, not the knives! or stairs! or outlets! or marble-eating!" chasing, to having 30 second conversations with everyone we know because half our brain is following our child around the room.

At times, the need to get away is not about distance from kids, but rather rediscovering silence; the peace of morning coffee, the whisper on the breeze, the gentle nudging warmth of the sun ray.

After a long winter of waking up with the baby and every communicable daycare disease known to man, it was time for just such a retreat.

Having the invaluable asset of in town grandparents to help with the kiddos and a husband with gobs of hotel points saved up from his years of consulting travel, my aunt and I embarked on a long weekend up the Southern California Coast.

Chapter I: San Diego Meets Cousin

We arrived Tuesday afternoon, picked up our rental mustang convertible (when in Rome with the sunshine...) and picked up my aunt's cousin Sharon, who my aunt hasn't seen in 27 years. After a few death-defying merge sequences across 8-lane California freeways, we made it to lunch at Humphrey's, a hotel on San Diego's Shelter Island with marina views.

That evening we checked into the Andaz Hotel - a boutique chain owned by Hyatt - located in the Gaslamp district with a killer rooftop pool & bar view. (And stellar maple/bacon brussel sprouts). Having arrived in the "May Gray"/"June Gloom" portion of San Diego's weather year, there were clouds most mornings, that generally burned off by afternoon.



The next morning we partook of an excessively green omelette (again, when in Rome with the vegetable eaters...), and hopped on a 2 hour tour of the San Diego bay.



The bay buzzes with boat and helicopter traffic; it's not only one of the best places for sailboating in the USA, it also houses the large Coronado Naval Base (home of course to the rigorous SEAL training "hell week"). We passed a number of naval vessels receiving repairs, including the newer Independence class, which has a Star Wars vibe (in engineering terms, increased speed, stability, and radar elusiveness).



The San Diego-Coronado Bridge opened in 1969 at 2.1 miles - originally planned to be slightly shorter until engineers realized that federal funds were available for bridges greater than 2 miles long. Today it remains a sweeping part of the San Diego landscape.

We grabbed a late lunch near San Diego Seaport Village - after touring kitchy but cute shops like the "Hot Licks" hot sauce-only store, then hit the road in the afternoon to head towards Huntington Beach.

Southern California locals spend a significant portion of their lives kvetching about traffic. We discovered that this is not a baseless past-time, and after doing a fair amount of highway-sitting on our way from San Diego north to Huntington Beach, we pulled into Laguna Beach to wait out rush hour. Soldiering on through our suffering, we browsed the cute local shops, and caught a gorgeous sunset from the patio of the Laguna Beach Hotel. Arriving in Huntington Beach Wednesday evening, we crashed in Surf City to rest up for another day of California Adventures!

The Quest: Snow to Thames and Back

In the epic Arthurian quests of old, the goal was not primarily the destination, but the journey, the refining of the soul that happens as the heat of adversity, detours, and distractions burn away the dross and leaves behind a purer metal.

Last week was a quest of Arthurian scale, recast in modern times. While I strove to keep the length of this blog less epic than the scale of the adventure it tells, I both petition your reading endurance, and invite you along for this most curious of journeys.

It all began with a seemingly innocuous goal: getting to London for a 3-day business meeting marathon.

Chapter 1: The Home Front

Leaving an 8 month old and 2 ½ year old isn’t the easiest of tasks, but with sufficient prior planning can be accomplished. Having lined up my husband and mom to help cover everything while I was out, we hit Snag #1 when the Thursday before my Monday departure my husband threw out his back. Not a “I have a slight twinge when I do a back handspring” but a “lying flat on the office parking lot asphalt because my back has frozen and I can’t move” sort of throwing out. Obviously this means no lifting kids. Obviously this is therefore a problem when said young kids require constant lifting for diaper changes, carseats, and cribs. Solution: Move husband and kids to my parents’ house for the weekend in preparation for Snag #2: snowzilla.

The snow is falling...

Richmond occasionally gets snow, and its predicted coming creates a frenzied atmosphere in grocery and hardware stores where shelves are pillaged of bread, milk, shovels, and sleds. To those in the northeast and Midwest, this curious stampeding for staples is a strange but rather endearing oddity; for those who experience Richmond snow – and the phenomenon that is roads untouched by a plow for many days – the phenomenon is less appealing. The city got 14-16 inches over the weekend, one of our largest snowfalls in memory. This would be a welcome chance to hunker down inside (for a short period at least – more than 72 hours cooped up with a baby and toddler will cause even the sturdiest of souls to adopt a twitch), except for said requirement of actually getting out of Richmond in order to land in London. This leads to:

and falling... and falling...

Chapter 2: The Journey

Initial plan status: straightforward. Drive from parents’ house to my house to get passport. Drive from my house downtown to meet colleague (Kathryn). Drive together in rental car to flight out of Dulles. Snowzilla means that only one runway is operating, but google claims our flight is on time, so plans proceed.

Snag #3: Approximately 100 feet out of parents’ driveway, I get stuck. Like, stuck stuck. Shovel the tires, get help from passerby good Samaritans stuck. We finally dig out, I go another 200 feet and get stuck again. Repeat process with shoveling, pushing, and good Samaritans. Go another 200 feet and get stuck a third time. Decide this is for the birds, utilize more shoveling, pushing, and good Samaritans to try to get car back into said driveway where everything started 60 sweaty minutes ago. Call Kathryn and ask her husband to come pick me up in their 4 wheel drive truck.

Snag #4: Arrive in said 4 wheel drive truck at my house (30 mins away) and realize that I have forgotten my house key. Imagine banging my head repeatedly against side of 4 wheel drive truck. Tromp around house trying to figure out if we have a window or door unlocked – which of course we do not. Happily (in an odd way), Kathryn’s husband announces that if I can find a metal coat hanger, he can easily pop the latch on our garage door to get it open. While this permanently undermines my sense of safety (we now lock the door between the house and the garage), I beg a coat hanger from our neighbors (who are very confused but comply), and pop! We’re in the house.

Finally! My jeans are wet from shin-high snow, I’m sweaty from shoveling, my socks are damp, but I have my passport and I’m in a moving vehicle. Things must start to go our way, right?

Snag #5: Kathryn and I meet at her house, and after getting the rental car unstuck a time or two (thank the Lord for the profusion of good Samaritans around the city), we begin the 2 hour drive up to Dulles Airport. We stop an hour later at  Wawa to get lunch, only to have another helpful passerby point out, “Oh, did you notice your front tire is basically flat?” Why no, we had not. Thank you, Wawa, for free air – though having an air pump with a pressure gauge that actually worked would have been marginally more helpful. We fill up the tire until it looks even-ish with the other ones, hit the road again.

Guesstimating tire pressure...

Snag #6: An hour and 40 minutes into our drive to Dulles, I applaud Kathryn on having a husband so handy in a pinch, since otherwise my passport would be stranded inside my house, and she turns to me with a stricken look and says “Passport. I forgot my passport.” Surely she’s joking, I think. But she is not. She calls her husband (who is watching their 6 small kids), he gets her passport, hops in the car and starts driving towards us. With absolutely no traffic, he MIGHT make it in time for us to get our flight. We decide to try. After dropping off our rental car (and waiting for a new shuttle bus when the first one got stuck in the snow), I go through security and wait at the gate. Kathryn hovers, waiting for her husband’s passport delivery.

Stuck in the snow...

Thanks to her sprained ankle boot, they let her go through the (line-less) handicapped security line, and she arrives at the gate with literally moments to spare. I check the mirror and find out that while I suspect my hair has gone completely gray, it is in fact – surprisingly – still brown.

Snag #7: Having boarded the plan, we sit on the runway and I see Kathryn looking at Air BnB postings in London. Since we were both so sure that the plane would never leave (Dulles only had one of four runways open, most flights were cancelled), we hadn’t booked a place to stay. You know, for when we landed. In 7 hours. Kathryn clicks the “book” button, we pray the owner will check her Airbnb messages before we land at 6am and away we go.

Landing in London 7 hours later, still wearing damp socks, we breathe deeply the London air, take a sigh of relief to note the Airbnb owner accepted our booking, stop by British Airways lost and found to retrieve the coat Kathryn left on the plane, and finally make it to Clapham, our corner of London.

Fast forward through 3 days of packed meetings…

Brief London sighting going into breakfast...

Somewhat brain-dead from a packed few days of meeting marathons, Kathryn & I trundle into an Uber to head to the airport. Having flown out on British Airways, we go back to the BA terminal, go to check in and realize simultaneously A) we were actually on American Airlines going home (wrong terminal) and B) Kathryn’s phone fell out in the Uber car. By using airport wifi to Skype the Uber car driver from the airport lobby via Kathryn's laptop (since my phone won't connect) we get Uber guy to agree to come back. And we then hop on the London Underground to (eventually) get to the right terminal. Since the Uber guy can't drive us unless we book him on the app which we can't connect to anyway since we're standing outside without Wifi. Right.

True to stereotype, the American plane is basically a flying tin can from circa 1980. Each seat does have a screen, but there are no on-demand movies, just a couple looping options that sporadically stutter, start over, or randomly turn off. Since we are alive and on a moving vehicle, we take this in stride.

Landing in New York at 9PM (2 am body clock time for us), it becomes quickly apparent that we are late enough to miss our connection. This is an issue A) because it was the last flight out, and we’re now stuck overnight in the purgatory-like ambiance that is JFK airport and B) because Kathryn had her son’s birthday party and daughter’s school party the next morning she needed to get back to. We consider taking an Amtrak train, renting a car, or taking the Chinatown cheap-o bus, none of which work out – for a variety of reasons I will spare you the details of.

Fine. Having gotten through and survived to Snag # 8,342,174, this can’t daunt us. Except we’re exhausted. And JFK airport is like a third world country. And right before our flight, a flight to Buenos Aires got cancelled, which means that there are 2 people at the American Airlines rebooking desk and (literally) 235 people in front of us, all of which need rebooking and hotel/meal vouchers, and many of which speak little English and are a mixture of confused, incredulous, and angry. Rather like us, except by this point we are too zombie-like to be angry and instead just stare into space with glazed expressions, shuffling forward with the line in beleaguered silence.

While we wait 90 minutes in the interminable hotel voucher line, I call American Airlines customer service and spill said sob story about kiddos to convince them to rebook us from Dulles to a direct Richmond flight. 30 minutes of supervisor bounce-around later, they agree. Except JFK doesn’t fly direct to Richmond. Ok… having lived in NYC 5 years, I know American flies direct La Guardia to Richmond, can we do that? [Cue additional supervisor discussion]. Ok, yes. And American will cover the hotel and the car over to La Guardia. Great.

Vouchers in hand, we ride from JFK to the La Guardia Comfort Inn (another bastion of purgatory-like ambiance, though with a shower and clean bed, we could care less), when I realize I need to find 8 AA batteries because the breastmilk pump I’d been toting along has died. And it’s midnight. In a sketchy part of Queens. Of course La Guardia Comfort Inn does not have a store, nor does the desk have batteries, but the desk guy informs me there’s a 24 hour gas station a couple blocks down I could walk to. While walking alone at midnight near La Guardia airport likely isn’t the smartest move, at this point I’m fully convinced it is statistically impossible for anything else to go wrong on this trip. I jog there and back, arrive safely, and pass “just” one possible drug deal in process. Success.

The next morning, we get into the La Guardia terminal, only to hear from the gate agent that there “may be possible mechanical failure” and that the crew is “checking it out.” Happily (I guess?) they decide there is not mechanical failure, we board 30 mins late, and finally land in Richmond. Exhausted, elated, befuddled, we finally make it home, down coffee, and lay to rest the Epic London Quest of 2016.

Like any true Quest, morals were realized along the way – the help of good Samaritans, the assistance of spouses and grandparents, the benefits of perseverance. And like any true Quest we emerged at the end with a more nuanced perspective on life. But all the same, it was awfully nice to get home.

Seasons of Purpose

It has been many moons since my last blog post. 377 days, to be precise in the solar rather than lunar sense. While it would be tempting perhaps to categorize this draught of writing under the guise of simply drifting so thoroughly into the business world that I no longer feel the need to touch base with my English-major self, this isn’t the case. Rather it has been a season this past year of inward looking: tending a two year old, managing a husband traveling out of state 4 days a week, expecting a second baby, and working full time. Sherlock Holmes once explained that he is very careful about the knowledge he collects, because our brain is an “attic” into which only a finite amount of information will fit. 

“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.” (A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle)

Emotional space works the same way – there comes a point where we are at full capacity, emotionally and mentally. During these times, we must be intentional to focus on what is meaningful. The receiver of our focus can and does change; what Solomon recognized millennia ago, that “for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter in heaven….a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away” (Ecclesiastes 3:1,5-6).  The last year has been a season of small children survival; now with a husband living locally again and 2 kids doing at least some degree of sleeping, I am re-emerging tendrils of focus into the space of written thought and silent reflection. It is a new season. I look forward to embracing it, and invite you along for the ride.

Out of Office: The Chemistry of Wine

This post is about wine. And balloons. And vacation. And chemistry.

Breaking rule #1 of writing: never sacrifice clarity just for the sake of a pithy title. Restated: Welcome to a post which will shortly discuss the chemistry of wine making, but in which we will first partake of a divergence to ponder the realities of surveying the local countryside within the aviary confines of a hot air balloon.

Better, right?

Being in Napa Valley, one of the busiest hot air balloon areas in the country, Chris and I decided on a masochistic-feeling, bleary-eyed early morning rise (read:4:30am) to join a hot air balloon ride. Any sensations of missing bed were long gone by the time we hit 3,000 ft altitude and were staring down at sweeping, gorgeous country below us.

Balloons inflating:

 

Up up and away! (Points if you can spot Chris & I. Giveaway hint - we are wearing red and green hats - the flames heating the balloon air keep heads toasty, so ballcaps recommended!):

Most of the way, the lyrics to Come Josephine, In My Flying Machine were stuck in my head:

Oh! Say! Let us fly, dear
Where, kid? To the sky, dear
Oh you flying machine
Jump in, Miss Josephine
Ship ahoy! Oh joy, what a feeling
Where, boy? In the ceiling
Ho, High, Hoopla we fly
To the sky so high

Come Josephine in my flying machine
Going up she goes! Up she goes!
Balance yourself like a bird on a beam
In the air she goes! There she goes!
Up, up, a little bit higher
Oh! My! The moon is on fire
Come Josephine in my flying machine
Going up, all on, Goodbye!

We visited several wineries for tours/tastings after the hot air balloon ride, including Grgich Hills, Sequoia Grove, Beringer, and Hendry. By far the tour that blew the rest away was Hendry.  We attended a 3 hour seminar given by the owner himself, George Hendry, a second generation farmer who is both smart in the chemistry and passionate in the art of growing grapes and creating wine. Adding an entirely new level of detail to the tour was the fact that Chris & I were joining 5 scientists from the Maryland area, a mix of soil/ecological specialists, so we got to benefit from answers to in-depth questions that made my inner science geek heart go a-pitter-patter. The seminar included a tour of the winery as well as a tasting of 8 wines and deep-dive into the science of wine palate.

A few of the most interesting topics:

What wine grows where? And why?
Grapes depend on three main elements for success: sunshine, temperature, and soil moisture. The photosynthesis process through which plants create energy stops when sunlight is not available, so the less sunlight, the less activity from the grape plant (ditto a grape plant in warm vs. cold temperatures - plant organisms are wildly more active in warmer climates). Red grapes are much more (I borrow George's term) "lethargic" and require more sunlight and warmer temperatures to mature, so closer to the equator = red grapes, further = white grapes. Soil moisture also plays a significant role. One might assume, as my non-agriculturally-savvy-self did, that well-watered plants would be best for growing grapes. Not so. Well-watered plants do a lot of growing of the plant vine itself, which actually diverts energy and nutrients away from the grapes. Less moisture "stresses" the plant, keeping the vine tops from growing and allowing all of the plant's energy to divert to the grapes, making them sweeter. (There is a moral lesson in here somewhere about difficult conditions making our character sweeter, or something like that).  Some of the lethargic wines further require that much of the fruit be pared away so that the nutrients remaining are concentrated in fewer grapes. This is less necessary in grapes like Zinfandel (meaning less fruit pruning = more fruit yield = more bottles per acre = lower price per bottle) and much more important for lethargic plants like Cabernet (more fruit pruning = less fruit yield = fewer bottles per acre = higher price per bottle).

What creates the flavor in vine?
Red grape juice is actually clear (not red) and basically flavorless. When red wine is processed, the skins, seeds, and juice are all included in the fermentation process (where sugar + yeast are converted into alcohol) - it is actually the skin being crushed that creates the red-colored juice and much of the flavor.  Red wine then has to be barrel-aged to allow malic acid to convert to lactic acid, improving flavor.  The skin and seeds for white grapes are not necessary in the wine making process, which means the wine does not have to be barrel-aged (though it can be to impart additional flavors).

 

What wines pair with what foods? And why? (Science Nerd alert).
The "and why?" part is what I loved, so I'm starting there. It all begins with our friend tannin. Tannin is a biomolecule heavily present in black tea and coffee. About 1 in 10 people have a taste sensitivity to tannin that makes it quite bitter tasting, and the barrel aging process imparts tannin (to varying degrees depending upon the grape/process) into wine.  Regardless of whether tannin tastes bitter (the 1 in 10 thing), it binds to proteins. Since much of our taste bud receptors are protein-based, when tannin comes in contact it binds to taste-buds and renders them ineffective temporarily. Result:
Sip 1 of red wine: Mmm, this is a nice full-bodied taste
Sip 2 (tannin now blocking some taste buds): Hmm, I don't taste much
Sip 3 (tannin now blocking most taste buds): Huh, this is pretty boring wine

Tannins are least present in whites (to non-existent in some types) and most present in reds (particularly Cabernet Sauvignon).  At this point it seems tannins are evil agents out to make us taste biterness or nothing at all. So why ever drink red wine?

Enter the counter-player: fat. Fat in food acts similarly to tannin, coating the taste buds and diminishing our ability to taste (so bite 1, 2, and 3 of ribeye are progressively less flavorful if eating back-to-back). We mentioned earlier that tannin binds, and in this case rather than binding to the protein of a tastebud (making the taste bud less effective), it binds instead to the fat coating the taste bud, acting as a sort of detergent and rendering the taste bud free and clear to enjoy flavor.

Result: Sip red wine, bite ribeye, sip red wine, bite ribeye = magic of flavor.

The nuance is that you have to balance the level of tannin (low to high) with the level of fat in the food (low to high).

Pinot Gris - a light white wine, grown in higher moisture soils (meaning more vine growth and less sweetness in the grape -- see the what grapes grow in what areas section). Basically no tannin, so it's great as a pre-dinner wine or with light fish (not salmon) and light cheese (not cheddar/brie/etc) and herbs.

Unoaked Chardonnay - stronger in flavor than Pinot Gris since it's grown in soil with less moisture

Barrel oaked Chardonnay - barrels impart tannin, but also give wine additional flavor/complexity. Typically pairs well with chicken, slightly "richer" seafoods like lobster, fattier cheese (like brie/goat/soft cheese).

Pinot Noir - Lowest tannin level in red wine,pairs with low-moderate fatty foods like chicken, proscuitto as well as earthier vegetables like mushrooms.

Primitivo/Zinfandel - Primitivo is genetically the same to Zinfandel (decended from a Croatian grape), both Primitivo and Zinfindel are "fruit forward" (a fruit flavor hits the front of the palate), and the tannin level pairs well with mid-level fat/acid foods like pasta sauce, chutney, pork, BBQ or pot roast.

Cabernet Sauvignon - the most expensive of the reds given its "lethargy" (see above) which means fewer bottles yielded per acre of grapes. Pairs well with heavy foods like ribeye.

There is much more to the science of food pairing, including sweetness, acidity, and more - but we only had three hours with George! We will just have to go back to Napa at some point - aw, shucks ;o)

A more detailed chart of precise wine pairing from Wine Folly:

Out of Office: Concours on the Avenue, Winchester Mystery House & Napa Valley

We began Tuesday with the Carmel Concours On The Avenue (COTA), where Carmel blocks off most of its downtown streets to host many of the classic cars in town for the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance later in the week. We went early in the day, so some of the cars had not yet arrived, but it was pretty wild standing on the sidewalk and watching hundreds of cars rumble through the street to their display spots - with values from $100,000 to $10 Million or more.

I am by no means a car junkie, but a few pictures below of ones I found interesting:

  

Check out the old-school chain drive on the back wheels of this one!

Of particular note was a 1954 Ferrari 375 MM Spider - with its own full history listed here. Pricing was available "upon request" (read: if you have to ask, you can't afford it), but people around us mentioned that it was estimated to go for $10 - $50 Million. Requisite picture of us drooling over car:

 

From Carmel we trucked up to Napa Valley, making a brief stop at the Winchester mystery house - the Victorian house constructed by Sarah Winchester, the widow of one of the Winchester rifle company presidents. After the tragic deaths of Sarah's baby and husband, the lady was advised by a psychic that the spirits were displeased with her because of all the deaths created by Winchester guns - and that she would have to continually construct her house without stopping in order to appease the spirits. The results: construction began in 1884 on a San Jose, California farmhouse and continued until Sarah's death in 1922, creating 160 rooms, with staircases leading nowhere, windows in floors, and other illogical architectural constructs. All of the furniture was removed from the house after her death and it took six trucks working eight hours a day six weeks to remove everything.  Sarah's life was actually quite tragic; she apparently slept in a different room every night to confuse the spirits as to her location, and lived the life of a complete recluse save her servants and a niece.

Window in the floor

 

From San Jose it was on to Napa Valley - our hotel (Andaz Napa, a line of more contemporary hotels owned by Hyatt) and resting up for a day of touring tomorrow!