Day #3 -- More beer and good food.

Again we awoke before 6:00am and laid in bed until 7:00ish. Today we walked into Carlsbad Village to look at the shops. As we were walking down one of the main streets, we passed a book store with this sign posted in a number of places in the shop:

Apparently, the owner was NOT bitten by the Pokemon Go bug.

We passed this restaurant called Señor Grubby's -- didn't go in but did take a picture of the side of the building.

I went into a number of shops while Bob sat on a bench and read....  I did buy a cute top at one of the last places we went. This mural was on one of the retail buildings near the train station.  Still haven't really figured out what it is.

We walked back to the hotel and got ready to visit The Confessional, a tasting room in Encinitas run by The Lost Abbey, Port, and Hops Concepts Brewing Companies. Bob drove this time, "enjoying" the intermittent pace of I-5.  Such a treat.

I had had Lost Abbey beer in PA, so I was looking forward to trying some different varieties.  The tasting room was staffed by two knowledgeable young women, and we each tasted 2 beers.

These beers were more Belgian in style, my favorite kind of beer.

And here's a picture in front of the name of the place...

We also texted our friend Jeremy and got his input as to what beer he might like us to bring with us.  And we sent two postcards mailed by the tasting room people to two of our beer fan friends. Two glasses, a t-shirt, and 3 bottles of beer later, we were on our way to our lunch stop, Bagby Beer, suggested to us by another friend, Leah.

We sat in the bar area and ordered more beer and lunch. This was our view as we ate.

I had a Cubano sandwich, and Bob had pork belly poutine.  Both dishes were quite tasty and loaded with carbs, which we needed on this beer expedition. I didn't finish my sandwich, so we took it back to the room with us.  And after such a strenuous afternoon, we both took naps in between watching the Olympics.  Tasting beers is far more taxing than tasting wines, that's for sure. 

We had been staying right across the street from the ocean and yet hadn't set foot on the beach. Tonight was the night to change that!  We walked down a pathway to the beach and stood at the water's edge.  Fun!

https://youtu.be/dQLfYEn7n4I

On the way back to the hotel, we watched this guy playing a guitar who was joined by another guy and two girls. The new guy actually played something I knew, so I sang to Bob while they tried to remember the words. And there was some other guy, riding a bike with a can of beer in hand, who fell off his bike and then sat there looking really drunk while the guitar-playing was going on.  You can't make this stuff up.  

Because I was close to my 10,000 steps (for the first time this week!!), we walked back into town later in the evening to have a final margarita at the first place where we ate.  We sat at the bar and watched the US-Brazil volleyball games. A young man sat down next to us and had to show multiple IDs in order to get served. And then he said hello to us and asked, "Are you two on a date?"  To which I replied, "A 44-year date..."  And this guy kinda called us his heroes and talked about wanting to be able to say that someday.  How sweet.

I finally figured out how to find the closed captioning, so we watched a program about the subterranean part of the city of Rome.  Bed after 9:00.

Day #2 in Carlsbad, CA

We're still on East Coast time, so we were awake before 6:00am. Bob read and I social media-ed until it was time for breakfast, which was the usual continental fare but with freshly made waffles if desired. I desired!  After eating, we got ready for the day.  The first order of business was to drive up the coast just to check it out. We discovered that north of us was pretty much small streets with no ocean view once past our hotel, so we turned around and drove down to Encinitas.  Our plan for the afternoon was to go to Stone Brewery, take the tour and the tasting, followed by lunch at their bistro.  Our path took us on some windy mountain roads.  Yay.  I managed okay, but finding the actual building wasn't easy. We went to one building, which had a little arrow directing us to the next building over.  Turns out that, according to our tour guide through the brewery and tasting, one of the owners really hates signage. Maybe the path lined with GIANT stones (out of place for the area) was a clue.

Anyway, we signed up for the 12:00 tour and tasting, and I checked out the restaurant while Bob checked out the gift shop.

The bistro is light and airy with lots of stones -- get it??!!

Here's Bob hanging out in the gift shop.

And with the iconic Stone gargoyle.

Our tour guide was a former math teacher who now works at the brewery. He was charming and informative although the "tour" was really only two stops.  I asked some penetrating questions as did another beer-o-phile in the group.  Then we tasted 4 beers.  As we were tasting, we got to talking with some of the other people on the tour.  The other questioner was here from Houston with his wife -- they had already visited 27 different breweries and had lots of beer paraphernalia at home.  The other couple was from North Carolina.  They had driven from there in a 20-year-old car to deliver it to their son, who was due in to the San Diego Naval Base from the high seas the next day.  Their other son had also flown in to meet his brother.  What a lovely story!  

We had a delicious lunch at their bistro, sitting outside enjoying the lovely weather.  And it was a much easier drive back to our hotel -- mostly freeway.  

We were both so full of food and beer that we just lazed around for a couple of hours.  I sat by the pool for a while, and Bob took a little nap. We checked out the sunroof to see what the sunset might look like from there.

Apparently, they don't care about the invasive nature of bamboo -- these shoots were about 3 stories high!

Then we walked into town to get some bottled water.  We found a 7-11 with cheap bottles, and I found a place that makes ice cream and frozen yogurt using liquid nitrogen.

https://youtu.be/m59Ruq2-rUI

We took the water back and then walked into town to check out the Pizza Port. On the way, we walked through the weekly farmers market.  This sign is for Bob, who makes his own fermented vegetables.

We also saw a really old tree -- not sure what kind it is.

So back to the Pizza Port, which makes its own beer and serves pizza. No surprise there. You pick up your pizza when they call your name, so there's a constant litany of names being called. Interesting. We sat at the bar and watched the Brazil-Denmark game.  

We walked back in time to catch the sunset, but no flash of green.  :(

Only able to be done on the West Coast!

A view from a chaise lounge poolside.

Bed by 9:00pm.

Updating this blog! California 2016

Because I decided to shorten our trip by a day and a half this year, we left on a Tuesday rather than a Monday.  We also took a later flight than usual.  Our trip to the airport was easy, and we had plenty of time to have breakfast there before we got onto the plane. 

 We're so technologically savvy these days that we used our phones for our boarding passes AND I downloaded some stuff from Amazon video to watch on the plane. Pretty darned good for senior citizens.

Our plane took off late but landed early, but then we stepped into a wormhole that sort of took us back to 2015 when we ended up using a different rental car agency because the shuttle for the one I had initially used never showed up at the airport.  So this year I used one I had used a while back and liked.   Hmmm...things have changed. We watched 11 Hertz, 8 Avis, etc., pass us by. We waited over a half an hour to get on the shuttle -- at least someone answered the phone when I called. And then when we got to the place, there were 3 shuttle buses parked there. What????

So we finally got our car and headed to The Tripel, a small restaurant run by one of the Top Chef runner-ups in Playa del Rey.  We had some good beer and food. 

And then it was time to fight the battle of both the 405 and the 5.  Brutal.  Lots and lots of traffics even though we were in the HOV lane.  It took probably a half hour longer than "normal" to arrive at our hotel.  

After we checked in and unpacked a bit, we walked into town to a local Mexican restaurant.  Good choice on our part -- food was good as was the margarita, and it was Happy Hour all evening because it was also Taco Tuesday. 

This place was an easy walk from our hotel. On the way back, we walked parallel to the beach.  We had missed sunset, but we'll be front and center either tonight or tomorrow night to catch the green flash!

Volleyball!

The beach is below the street.

Bed before 9:00PM.