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Boy Meets (Mud) Bath

Deb and I spent last weekend north of San Francisco in lovely Calistoga. to celebrate my 30th birthday in what was to be my first experience going to the Spa. We stayed at the Calistoga Village Inn & Spa, mainly because it had a swimming pool (actually 3!), but also because it wasn’t as expensive as the others in the area.

Despite living in the Bay Area—land of the grapes—we only belong to one wine club. On Saturday we went to the Wine Club BBQ at Wellington Vineyards (introduced to us by my mom’s college roommate of all people) over in Sonoma. We hurried back to Calistoga for our spa appointment at cottage-like Lavender Hill Spa in the early afternoon.

We first had the couples volcanic ash bath which was really just relaxing in adjacent jacuzzi’s (which doesn’t suck—but it didn’t strike me as “spa-worthy”). The bath water was infused with volcanic ash, and the spa attendant did bring you cold cucumber water and put cold clothes on your forehead, though. After the “bath,” we “rested” in another room while the attendant gave us foot massages—which very much struck me as “spa-worthy”…

After the bath we had separate one-hour massages. This was my first ever massage and I have to admit that I wasn’t so into it. I thought it was nice, but nothing spectacular. (Whew! They’re not cheap, and the last thing I need is to fall in love with something else expensive. :smile:)

Dinner that night was a big treat. Deb had booked a reservation at the Wine Spectator Greystone Restaurant located at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley. Greystone is located in a beautiful old winery on the campus of the CIA—which is a world-reknowned cooking (”culinary,” to use their parlance) school. The meal was amazing! We started with “Today’s Temptations” which were 5 pairs of individual bite-size appetizers for Deb and I to share. Since I am a summer baby, I always have corn with my birthday meal, and this time it was in the form of a sweet corn soup served with shredded crab which was also amazing! Deb had a beef filet and I had a pork chop, and they were both really (really) good. All of this—of course—was paired with some wonderful wines, instead of one bottle, we opted to get “flights” of 3 ounce glasses of wine with our meal. I had a flight of 4 different white wines to go with my pork chop and Deb had a flight of 3 really good reds with her filet. For dessert, we had a “lava-filled” chocolate cake which came with a candle since Deb had told them it was my birthday when she booked the reservation.

We figured since Calistoga is famous for its mud baths that we should try them out while we were up there, since who knows when Deb would ever talk me into another spa weekend. So Sunday morning we had honest-to-goodness mud baths. It was easily my favorite spa treatment of the weekend since it was such a unique feeling. You are literally suspended in this giant tub of mud. Very hot mud. It is very relaxing and surreal, especially if you think about it too much: “I’m sitting in mud… On purpose.”

We spent the rest of the day driving around some of the regions of Sonoma: Dry Creek Valley, Alexander Valley, and couple others I can’t remember. We visited several wineries, but my favorite based on the wines was Alexander Valley Vineyards and my favorite based on the tasting room was the ultra-mod Roshambo Winery which, aside from having pretty good Zinfandels, is named after the game “Rock, Paper, Scissors.” How cool is that?

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Calistoga Trip — Deb’s Version

Our trip to Calistoga and the wineries was a success! We drove up to Calistoga on Friday evening and after checking into the Calistoga Village Inn and Spa we ate dinner at the Flatiron Grill. We went to a nearby bakery for vanilla bean gelato and strawberry champagne sorbetto, my new favorites. Then we headed back to the hotel for a dip in the mineral pool.

On Saturday morning we ate crepes in town and then took a drive to Sonoma, using a map that was definitely not to scale (we got a little lost) and we ended up at our favorite winery Wellington Vineyards. There we tasted some wine, enjoyed a bbq and bought a bunch of wine and port.

We then headed to the Lavender Hill Spa for a Volcanic Ash Bath and massages. Matt’s very first massage, in fact.

After some relaxing in the pool back at the hotel, we headed to St. Helena to do some shopping, however everything was closed by 6pm, so we grabbed a french baguette and some brie and had some appetizers in a park next to the police station, due to some severe hunger, before heading over to the CIA for dinner. Specfically the Wine Spectator Restaurant at Greystone. There we looked around the cool stone building and the gardens. We then proceeded to have a very delicious dinner. My favorite was the tasty temptations appetizer where they gave us 5 different bite sized appetizers, cucumber soup, crunchy beef rolled up tasty treats, yummy olives, and more! For dessert we got a warm chocolate lava cake with Happy Birthday written on the plate in chocolate and a candle.

On Sunday we got up early and went for a real mud bath at the spa at our inn which involves volcanic ash, peat moss and dirt. I will let Matt tell you about that since it was his favorite. We headed into town to get more gelato and sorbetto and some volcanic ash and mud mask so I could bring Calistoga home with me!

Healdsburg at the northern point of Sonoma was our next stop. We tasted and bought wine at Alexander Valley Vineyeards, Mazzocco Vineyards, Roshambo (which means Rock Paper Scissors in Japanese) and Everett Ridge. After a long day of wineries we headed home for much needed sleep from such a packed weekend!

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“Hungry Cat” is in the House!

It’s here! It’s here!

The painting Deb got me for my birthday arrived on Tuesday and I opened it as soon as I got home. Although I knew the dimensions of the painting, but it still looked a lot bigger than I was anticipating. We have already hung it in the living room. I agree with Deb’s assessment it looks a little pathetic up there all by itself, but we’ll get there…

The very cool thing about the painting is that he signed the back of it “Happy Birthday” in both English and Swedish. We haven’t gotten a picture of it yet, but we will probably do that soon since it looks so cool. He also included the above handwritten letter with the parcel.

Thanks Deb! I love it.

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Back from the Dead

IMHosted, our web hosting company, appeared to have had a major hiccup while Deb and I were up in Calistoga this past weekend. That meant a lot of different things—including email interruptions over the weekend—but it mainly means the entire blog had to be rebuilt. I’ve just finished most of that. (Remember kids: back-up, back-up, back-up!)

Deb and I will post some updates about our (wonderful) trip to Calistoga in the next couple of days, but right now I am just glad you aren’t looking at a big old error page anymore.

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Important News from MSNBC

MSNBC asks: What’s In a Name? Deb and I ran across this link at about the same time this afternoon. It made us both laugh, mostly at the obviousness of it all.

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Happy Birthday to Me!

Today was my 30th birthday and Deb and I just got back from Matterhorn, a great fondue place Deb and I have been a couple of times in the past. This was, however, the first time we’ve dug into the cheese fondue before the main event and I think we’re hooked! We also had our favorite wine Blockheadia Zinfandel.

The big news, though, is that she’s taking me to up to Calistoga for the weekend. We’ll be getting mud baths and massages and spending time in the swimming pool and touring local wineries in the Napa and Sonoma Valleys. It should be a lot of fun!

Actually, the really really big news is that she got me a very cool painting for my birthday which should be arriving in the next week or so. It’s called “Hungry Cat” and is painted by Andreas Lindkvist who has an amazing website called lindkvist dot com which even has free fonts!

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Hello World

Thus it begins…

Deb and I have been talking about turning the front page of ellsworthlink.net into a blog for quite sometime. It seemed like a better and easier way to keep family and friends up to date on the latest goings-on in our lives. And it would make for slightly (ever so slightly) more interesting reading than the old home page looked like for months on end.

If you are a family member used to coming to the home page to link to your webmail, that link is still here—on the upper right-hand listing of “Links.”

The blogging software I’ve installed—WordPress—is actually quite good at running multiple installations. That means if any of you wanted to run a blog on your sub-domain it would be quite easy to do (dad?). And there are many templates you can choose from to make your site look different and individual. Just let me know if you want me to set you up!

Enjoy!

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