Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Back Again

When Mom and I surprised Claire with her birthday trip last fall, Mary tried her hardest to be able to come as well but it just didn't work out with her work schedule. The biggest benefit of our mother being a travel agent is that it was easy to convince her to plan another trip in order for Mary to go this time.














Best photo I could get of 'Monster Book of Monsters'. 




As before, it was the EPCOT Food and Wine Festival. We stayed at the Disney Beach Club Resort, which is within walking distance of EPCOT. Being so close to the park, we decided to book park hopper passes for the days we were in Orlando.  So after being at Island's of Adventure all day, we walked over to EPCOT and had some wine and fireworks.



-Elise 

Monday, November 14, 2016

A Perfect Day

Sometime, about three or so years ago, I joking commented to my parents that when Claire turned 21 we should take a family trip to Napa. My parents have always been wine aficionados and it's an expensive habit that they turned onto their children. 

Well, that joke became a reality and last fall the family made the trek to NoCal and up to Napa. The timing was perfect. We spent a day in sailing on Scott's yacht (pictures to come) and then on the day before Claire turned 21 we drove up to Napa and at midnight on celebrated with the token bar visit. The next day we helped her celebrate more at our favorite winery: Hendry


If you ever get the chance, GO! The tour we had was in-depth and beyond amazing. Our guide had a science background and was able to tell us a lot about the wine making process both in general and about Hendry. 




Our guide, was amazing. I love Hendry wines but the tour took that to a whole new level. 







We were walked through the different grapes and encouraged to taste the grapes off the vines themselves. 


Our guide encouraged trying to taste the different flavors that were in a single grape. 




During the tour, we heard of an earthquake that was so high on the scale that barrels of wine fell down and exploded on the ground. The winemakers walked in the next day to find themselves ankle deep in spoiled wine. Can you imagine? All of that wonderful wine going to waste on the floor; such a shame. 


Each marking on the barrel means something: the year, the number of the time the barrel had been used and the type of grape or wine inside. 

That's a log of corks.






-Elise 

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Christmas in Paris

Through a series of fortunate events, on our way to our trip to Ireland and Scotland, Mary and I had a 24 hour layover in Paris. It also happened to be on Christmas day. I'm not going to complain. I love Paris, it's beautiful. And, how many people can say they've gone to Christmas mass in Notre Dame? 




















-Elise