I came into the apartment a few minutes ago, poured myself a cold coke over a tall glass of ice, closed the patio windows and turned the AC on. I spent the better part of the day in Los Altos and Palo Alto. According to my trusty little pedometer I walked about six miles, all in all. I can feel the heat radiating off my skin, telling me I got a little too much sun. I doubt I burned, but I can feel the effects of it.
The Art & Wine Festival was nice. We got there about 11:00, just as the festival was opening up, so on our first pass, a good percentage of the vendors were not quite set up and most of the bands were just in the process of opening. Anticipating a bit of heat the first thing I did was get a cup of fresh lemonade (I would drink three before the day was over). It is close rivalry in my mind between which is best on a hot day - iced tea or lemonade. Lemonade won today.
The day was not to hot and the streets of Los Altos are tree lined. There was a bit of a breeze blowing that kept the heat at bay for most of the time we were there.
It was a leisurely and lazy day and time passed very slowly, which was a welcome relief from the hectic pace I had been setting for the last couple of months.
We stopped for lunch at a little Vietnamese/Chinese fusion place called Peony. Appetrizers were very good. Two of the three dishes were good. One was...decidedly...not. By luck of the draw that was my entree. I had ordered the Peony Special Lemon Chicken. Unfortunately, the special was they forgot to put it down on the first sweep, and then when they finally did get it down, they fast fried a frozen chicken breast. One bite was enough for me to send it back. I am not particularly a fuzzy eater - but bad is bad when it comes to food. This is a picture of one of the excellent appetizers - Vietnamese Spring Rolls in a peanut sauce. Don't consider this a negative review of Peony - the food that was good, was very good. One dish does not a bad restaurant make.
After lunch, we wandered back into the festival. It was starting to fill up by then. According to their brochure they draw 120,000 people over the three days of the festival, which is pretty typical for a major festival here in CA. There were 380 vendors.
We spent a couple of hours there, wandering the vendors, listening to music, snacking on a variety of foods and drinks. Then, my friend Pierre did a weird thing. Pierre likes Lockeford Sausages.
They are a vanity sausage (bet you never even heard of vanity sausages) from a small maker up in the Sierras. Despite the fact we had eaten, snacked, and sipped out way through the festival - Pierre had to have his Lockeford Sausage. So he bought one and carried it back to the car. So he could take it home. It was...amusing.
So, we wrapped up the Los Altos Art & Wine Festival, strange food incidents aside, and drove over the the Stanford Shopping Center to get some ice cream (the lines were too big at the festival and Hagen Daz place at Stanford is just up the street a few miles. I ordered a brownie sundae. Only, uh, there was no brownie. Sigh, it did seem to turn into a day in which I was food denied. So, I will have to cook something up for dinner, just to make sure I get what I want.
All in all it was a good day, spend in good company, wandering in the California sun. There were some reflective thoughts that went along with it, but I shall ponder on them write about them, perhaps a little later today.
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