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San Diego's December Nights Spread Holiday Cheer Under The Palm Trees
It's hard to feel the holiday vibe in San Diego when the temps hover at 80 degrees and the only trees you see are of the palm variety. But when traditional events like the Balboa Park's 32nd annual December Nights roll around, it starts to feel a lot like Christmas.
San Diego's kick-off to the season will take place December 4 from 5 to 10 p.m. and December 5 from noon to 10 p.m. in Balboa Park. More than 300,000 revelers are expected to attend December Nights, the largest free community festival in the city. Start off the festivities at the International Christmas Festival at the House of Pacific Relations Cottages. There you can get eats from all around the globe like Polish kielbasa, Panamanian fried plantains and Filipino lumpia, a yummy kind of egg roll. But wait, there's so much more...
Tags: Christmas Alternatives / Wine Travel / California Travel / Napa Valley Travel / → All Tags
What Napa's All About: Bed and Breakfasts and Wine Tastings
Gift giving, twinkling lights, and plenty of booze often make for a festive holiday season, but going overboard with the latter wouldn't garner a stamp of approval from Kris Kringle. Leave it to Napa's wine producers and humble Bed and Breakfast proprietors to class up those awkward, alcohol-tinged family gatherings and raise some money for charity in the process.
Plenty of Napa Valley wineries are having holiday Open House events on weekends, but to experience a smorgasbord of varietals, vintner offerings, and enjoy the quaint charm of Downtown Napa, buy a ticket to the annual B&B Tour & Taste Event. The four-hour affair will take place on December 5th from 2:00-6:00 PM, when ticket-holders will go from one B&B to the next to "ooh" and "aah" over wreaths, ornaments, and tinsel decor.
Tags: Thanksgiving Alternatives / Thanksgiving Travel / California / California Travel / Lake Tahoe / → All Tags
Ditch Cooking and the Fake Smile for Thanksgiving in Tahoe
Lake views and no cooking; that's what we call Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving can either make you feel elated or totally stressed out—usually some combination thereof. After that Pumpkin Pie high, your mind might turn to thoughts of dishes that need to be washed, relatives that need to be entertained, and horrific Black Friday shopping. The benefit of hightailing it out of town during this time is being able to push some of these worries away, while still enjoying the Thanksgiving spirit.
Lake Tahoe is always a favorite holiday destination, for its views of the water, skiing, and the fact that it's pretty much the opposite of a harried urban setting, however overrun with tourists it can get. We found some last minute event deals at the Hyatt Regency Resort that offer easy and relatively cheap remedies to some of the problems we mentioned above.
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San Francisco Gets Freaky This Weekend With Animation
A scene from Metropia, not for the kids
If you happen to be visiting the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend and are looking for a last-minute culture fix, our suggestion is the Fourth Annual S.F. International Animation Festival. The festival's kick-off took place earlier this week, with an Opening Night screening of the new Wes Anderson movie The Fantastic Mr. Fox.
While Fox is a larger studio release, most of the festival's programming gives due time and attention to films that don't have the same hype or budget attached to them as a Pixar release—obscure international offerings, shorts, and other movies that don't usually find a place at your local cineplex. Don't get us wrong, we're still Pixar devotees, but this weekend's lineup is refreshingly challenging and less mainstream than, say, the umpeeth movie in the Shrek series.
Tags: Food Festivals / Food Travel / San Diego Travel / California Travel / → All Tags
Get The Fork To San Diego For SoCal's Largest Foodie Event
Foodies will want to pack their tank tops and head west to the sixth annual San Diego Bay Wine and Food Festival from November 18 to 22. Southern California's largest wine and food fest will feature culinary stars like James Beard Foundation Award winner for Best American Chef, Southwest, Alex Stratta of the two-star Michelin-rated ALEX at the Wynn Las Vegas; Cooking Light Magazine’s Executive Chef Billy Strynkowski; Peter Mondavi Jr. of Charles Krug winery; James Beard Foundation Award winner for Best Chef, Paul Bartolotta of Bartolotta at the Wynn Las Vegas, celebrity TV star Sam Zien of Sam the Cooking Guy.
The five-day festival will host more than 170 wineries, 70 fine-dining restaurants, gourmet food companies, wine-tasting seminars, celebrity artists, cooking classes by award-winning chefs and more. It's expected to draw 8,000 wine and food enthusiasts.
Tags: Beer Travel / California Travel / Drinking Travel / Best Factory Tours / → All Tags
Get Your Craft Beer From An Airplane Hangar In California
Beeeeer. While it's the drinking hour already here on the east coast, over in Los Angeles and Long Beach, they've still got a few more hours before it's socially acceptable to pop the top on a cold bottle of Hangar 24 Craft Beer. We were originally turned on to the unique Hangar 24 Brewery in Redlands, CA by the Lomography website, after someone used their fancy, artsy camera to capture the place's brewing magic and its hangar location.
Hanger 24 is relatively new to the microbrewery scene, having only opened in 2008, but the dream began in the skies:
Hangar 24 Craft Brewery began with a true passion for good beer, the absolute love of flying and the pure enjoyment of being around great friends. Founder and Master Brewer Ben Cook and his buddies used to meet at hangar 24 after an afternoon of flying to trade stories, talk aviation, play music and share a few cold ones that Ben just finished brewing at home.
Tags: Shopping Travel / California Travel / Thanksgiving Travel / → All Tags
The Year's Darkest Shopping Day Made Sunny At California Outlets
A sunny scene at the Desert Hills Outlets—before Black Friday
Black Friday is not for the faint of heart. Should you bear traces of tryptophan in your blood stream, or experience the after-effects of one too many glasses of wine from Thanksgiving, then sleeping in may suit you more than braving a crowd of rabid shoppers—and we do mean rabid. We've heard horror stories about Black Friday deaths and witnessed parent-on-parent showdowns at Toys 'R' Us, which are precisely the reasons that news outlets line up in the wee hours of the morning to document the mania.
If you're a brave enough consumer, then by all means drag yourself out of bed before sunrise and take advantage of the deals. Hey, it's your "patriotic duty," right? The West Coast, with shopping safe havens like Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and San Francisco's Union Square, is ripe for spending sprees, but some of the best deals are where discounts are knocked off of already marked-down prices.
Say it with us, readers: outlet shopping...
Tags: Train Travel / California / California Travel / Napa Valley Travel / Thanksgiving Travel / Thanksgiving Alternatives / Wine Travel / Wine Country / → All Tags
Gourmet On A Train: Ditch Cooking For A Napa Wine Dinner
There is a certain romantic allure to train travel—just ask fictional sweethearts Jesse and Céline of Before Sunrise. But Stateside, unfortunately, the mode of transport isn't as common as it is in other parts of the world. While you continue to dream about hopping aboard a Darjeeling Railway car, we're happy to report that a smaller-scale train trek can be had in California, even if it is less grand than journeying across exotic international ground.
The Napa Valley Wine Train is a refined alternative to unofficial "drunk buses" tourists often book to stay safe while sipping wine flights throughout the day. Equally drinker-friendly, and much more respectable, the train is holding a special Thanksgiving dinner aboard its Gourmet and Vista Dome cars for $104 and $139, respectively. Sadly, lunch tickets have already sold out.
Tags: Top Chef Travel / San Francisco Travel / California Travel / Top Chef / Food Travel / Restaurant Travel / → All Tags
Laurine Wickett Of 'Top Chef' Gives Left Coast Some Market-Fresh Options
This week's cheftestant profile involves travel to you, rather than a self-initiated jaunt to a cast member's restaurant. Laurine Wickett, whose tenure on Top Chef effectively ended after what is arguably the show's most difficult challenge, "Restaurant Wars," has since returned to San Francisco where she runs Left Coast Catering.
New York born, but Northern California bred—at least in the culinary sense—Laurine incorporates the Bay Area's various cultural influences into market-fresh menus for her clients. Whether left coast parents planning a Bat Mitzvah or bride-to-be hosting a dessert reception, Laurine will provide you with options galore. We perused some of her sample menus online, which reflect a flavorful Californian approach to cooking while turning to other regions of the world for inspiration. She does everything from sushi stations to steak and french fries, on the same menu if you'd like guests to have multiple options. Her ill-fated Pork Rillette (or, as Dana Cowin punishingly put it, "cat food") made no appearance on any of the menus we saw.
Tags: San Francisco / San Francisco Travel / Educational Travel / California / California Travel / → All Tags
The Golden Gate Bridge Wants You To Stay Longer, Learn Something
San Francisco's majestic orange gateway, the Golden Gate Bridge, has served as highlight in panoramic film shots, and famously, a protest site for a green-friendly Hollywood actor. It's come to represent the City by the Bay like no other landmark, hence the throngs of tourists and locals that flock to it for photo opportunities, or to see its fantastic details up close.
To augment its beauty, the San Francisco Chronicle reported this week that The National Science Foundation "awarded the bridge district $3 million...to install outdoor exhibits explaining "its engineering and history." For visitors, this offers the chance to soak up some educational details while ogling its impressive construction. During most of our visits to the Bridge, we've seen people cruise by for a quick picture and maybe a moment of reflection, then quickly depart. The installations will, hopefully, remedy this hurried tourist mindset. Reports the Chronicle:
Tags: Ski Travel / California / California Travel / Skiing / Free Stuff / → All Tags
Mammoth Mountain Opens Early, Free Skiing For All!
Skiing in Southern California sounds like a horrible oxymoron, or a poorly conceived of joke. But it's true, Golden State foreigners: There's snow to be found around our usually heat-stricken climes, namely at Mammoth Mountain.
In recent years we've heard reports of poor snowfall and late season starts in some California skiing regions, Lake Tahoe in particular. That isn't the case at Mammoth in 2009, though; the mountain was hit with two-to-six feet of snow ahead of schedule, according to a report from the Los Angeles Examiner, boding well for ski bunnies itching to hit the slopes early. The Examiner states that Mammoth's current "26 inches of snow is the highest October total since the 2004-05 season," with "warm temperatures approaching 60 degrees" around the mountain. Now that's oxymoronic.
Tags: Top Chef / Top Chef Travel / Food Travel / California / California Travel / San Francisco / San Francisco Travel / San Francisco Restaurants / → All Tags
Get Cozy With Top Chef's Mattin In San Francisco
As we uphold our weekly tradition of highlighting ex-cheftestants, giving due attention to the poor souls that didn't make it to the Final Three, we arrive at sprightly French chef Mattin Noblia. With a million-watt smile and red neckerchief that we hope he was wearing ironically, Noblia stole our hearts for being so disarmingly sweet...or maybe it was the accent. Either way, Padma and Co. bid Mattin au revoir after he presented a disastrous ceviche that Tom Colicchio found so offensive he actually spit it out. Tragic.
When he's not flashing his boyish grin on national television, Mattin can be found at Iluna Basque, his San Francisco restaurant. As you can guess from its name, the cuisine is inspired by the Basque region, served up on small plates that diners are encouraged to share.
