We had never been to the original Academy of Sciences, but this newly redeveloped one is certainly very nice and large. There are quite a number of sights to see including the major attractions such as the Planetarium (which runs every hour on the half-hour starting), the Rainforest, the Living Roof, and more.

Because it was packed, we weren’t able to see the Planetarium show, the Rainforest, or the Living Roof. We did visit a few of the exhibits, which were quite interesting. Oh well, we have a membership to the Academy now, so we’ll be back another day. No biggie. The best days to go to avoid all the people is Tuesday thru Thursday (except for when holidays fall on those days) and the third Wednesday of every month, which is the free admission day.

Enjoy the pics here.

Today is the day where we recognize and honor our veterans and troops. Veteran’s Day has even more meaning to me personally. My Uncle (dad’s brother) fought, and lost his life, in the Vietnam war. I never got the chance to meet him. I hear stories about him from my grandma and that’s pretty much it. Because he served and fought for our country, he did not die in vain. Today Richard and I honored him by visiting his grave and laying flowers. We honor all our troops; freedom comes at a cost.

Day 1: November 3, 2008

When you first arrive at Ferrari-Carano, it’s hard not to be impressed by the decor and splendor of the grounds. According to our wine pourer (I’m sure there is a fancy term for this person), it takes five grounds-keeper working five days a week to maintain the beauty of the grounds. With all the beautiful flowers, gardens, fountains, etc., the grounds are not open to public events such as weddings. You are permitted to venture, explore, and appreciate most of the grounds as long as you stay on the trails. Ferrari-Carano offers tours by appointment only (24-48 hours notice) and generally are done only at 10 AM daily. There are two tasting rooms, the one upstairs for their standard wines available in major stores (such as Costco) and the bar downstairs for their Reserve wines not available anyone else. The standard wine tasting is $5 per person and $15 for the Reserve tasting. Andrea and I did the standard tasting as Andrea and I are more particular to white wines and the majority of the Reserves are red wines. The whites that we sampled were: 2007 Pinot Grigio (our favorite), 2007 Fume Blanc, 2006 Tre Terre Chardonnay - Russian River Valley, and 2006 Chardonnay - Alexander Valley. All were very smooth and very tasting. I would certainly like to return and do a tour of their grounds.

Our next stop was a smaller winery, Arista, also located in Healdsburg. Their grounds are also nice, but obviously not to the same scale as Ferrari-Carano. For $5 per person, we sampled two whites and two reds. The ones we tried were: 2007 Mononi Vineyard Pinot Gris, 2007 Anderson Valley Gewurztraminer, 2006 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir, and their special the 2006 Longbow Pinot Noir. Most of all their wines were a bit too sweet for our liking. The last one, the Longbow had a unique, spicy flavor to it. By the time we finished at Arista it was already about 5 PM and all the other winerys were closed, so we figured it was best to check in to where we were going to stay: Inn at Occidental. Forgot to mention that Al McWilliams, one of the owners, is an excellent photographer. All the photographs hanging in the tasting room was taken by him.

We usually go to Occidental to have dinner at famous Italian diner, Negri’s. On a few occasions, Andrea has mentioned she would love to stay at the famous bed and breakfast at the top of the hill. So I figured this was the best time as any to fullfill her wish. So I reserved the Wine Country Room. The Inn at Occidental, owned by Tina and Gerry, is a beautiful place that is well decorated, large, with nice views. The Wine Country Room is absolutely goregeous with it’s own private entrance, fireplace, spa tub, king size bed, and more. They certainly take service very seriously as when we checked into our room, they had a homemade mini chocolate cake for Andrea. The spa tub even had three duckies in it! We were provided with stationary with our names printed on them, a welcome card with our name on it and dinner reservations at Bistro Des Copains, a French Bistro. They even have these really, really nice plush robes with Inn at Occidental embroidered on them.

We’ve never heard of Bistro Des Copains, despite being open for two years. It’s right next door to Negri’s and we’ve been to Negri’s many times. We figured we would try something different this time. The place is nicely decorated and seats a good amount of guests. We started out with the Salade Verte, butter lettuce in creamy fine herb vinaigrette. They started us off with bread and this paste of olives, anchovies, and other secret ingredients, way too salty because of the anchovies and olives. Tasted fine, nothing special. We also had Moules a la Provencale which is P.E.I. mussels with tomatoes, garlic, & pastis. The mussels were good, but the sauce was a bit too salty. Andrea ordered the Magret de Canard which is pan roasted duck breast with haricot verge and green peppercorn sauce. She liked the duck (more than the duck at Negri’s), but said the haricot verge didn’t have any taste to them. I ordered the Blanquette d’Agneau, poached shoulder of Sonoma lamb with mushrooms, onions, and au gratin potatoes, which I liked, it was good. Our waitress, Debbie, was very helpful and kind and so was the waiter who kept refilling our water. The Sauvignon Blanc Andrea ordered was on the house because it was her birthday. The bill came out to over $70 with tip. It was a different experience, but we probably wouldn’t eat here again because the food was too salty.

Day 2: November 4, 2008

Wished Andrea a very happy birthday! Breakfast at the Inn at Occidental is served from 8 AM to 10 AM, so we went to the dining room in the main house down stairs around 9 AM. There are pastries, coffee, tea, and fresh fruit available as they cook the specialty of the day: scrambled eggs with red peppers and other things in a Parmesan crusted “cup”. It was certainly good.

We started packing to leave. We decided to stop into Petaluma Village Premium Outlets in Petaluma to check out some stores and then home.

Slideshow

Click here to view the embedded video.

For Andrea’s birthday this year, we drove down to Sonoma for some romantic wine tasting. We also stayed at the beautiful Inn at Occidental in the Wine Country Room.

Be on the lookout for pictures and write-up soon! Happy birthday my love!

They have shuttles that drop you off at the Adobe Shopping Center for $3 per person. In retrospect, we could have probably walked from the ship to the shopping center and took a carriage ride or taxi back to the ship for less than $6 total.

We started our day with a nice morning workout in the gym on Deck 12 (Sports Deck) with a splendid view of the front. Once nice thing about Carnival Paradise is that the gym is free. We’ve stayed at a few various hotels and have been noticing a new trend as of late: charging for use of the gym. The gym is quite nice and large with plenty of workout machines and free weights.

After showing and getting ready, we went to Deck 3 to board a (free) boat ride to Catalina Island. The boat trip was about 15 minutes long.

There isn’t much to do on Catalina Island as we thought there would be and we only had until 4:30 PM to catch the last boat trip or be left behind. We decided best to see as much sights as possible, so we opted for a golf cart drive around the entire island. We went to Catalina & Cartopia Car Rentals to rent a golf cart. It cost $40 for the first hour with a $40 deposit. If you go past the first hour, depending on how much over you are, it is prorated off your deposit. After two hours, the third hour is free. The entire drive without stopping is forty five minutes, according to the staff person.

We drove for along Crescent Ave. to Casino Way to visit Avalon Theater since it looked like a nice structure from far away. Then we back tracked a bit and headed to the Wrigley Memorial & Botanical Garden and paid $5 per person to tour the gardens and memorial. We spent a good forty minutes there taking pictures and exploring. The rest of the time we spent driving around the suggested routes and returned the golf cart just at about the two hour mark. We departed back to the ship afterwards.

Back on the ship, we spent some time on the Sun Deck before going to dinner. At dinner, we were joined by the same two couples in addition to one of the other missing couples who was also from Utah. They live thirty minutes from the other Utah couple and happened to sit behind them on their flight to Long Beach Airport. Today, we realized how fortunate we were to be seated with other couples of similar age and it makes conversation and dinner so much more enjoyable.

When we got back to our stateroom, there was a nice little animal towel waiting for us. A nice doggy.

We arrived to the port where Carnival Paradise cruise ship is at about thirty minutes later (11 AM). When you arrive at the curb side, there will be Carnival Cruise staff who asks if you want to check-in any bags (for a small nominal fee of $3 per bag, more if you want your bag to get there in one piece…kidding…kind of) before hand, so you won’t have to lug all the additional luggage around through the metal detector and in line to get your boarding pass. We checked most of our luggage except for my shoulder bag that had my laptop and one of my cameras. Thank god for my Pelican 1514 hard case that locks so I’m able to check the rest of my valuable equipment without worries. A word of advice, any luggage that is checked, when they bring it on board and to your room, they leave it all outside your door. At first, we thought that doesn’t sound very good because anyone can walk off with someone else’s luggage, we later learned all the hallways are monitored and recorded.

The check-in time for the cruise ship was 1:30 PM, but they were allowing people to board earlier, provided you didn’t go to your room just yet as they are still bringing the luggage to the rooms. We were going to check out the Queen Mary cruise ship next door, but figured best to get situated and do it when we get back. Check-in was relatively easy, you have to show your proof of citizenship and boarding pass confirmation that you print online when booking and then you go through the metal detector. Then you stand in another line where they check your passport, actually check you in, and you get your Sail and Sign card. Afterward, you start boarding the ship on Deck 7, Empress Deck. This part took forever because this is where they take a picture of you and associate it to your Sail and Sign card. We probably stood in line for more than 30 minutes.

Once we were actually boarded, we went to Deck 10, Lido Deck to go outside. This is where the pool, stage, Paris Restaurant, Pizzeria, snack bars, bars, and the (off-limits) Bridge is located. We spent most of the day up there, having lunch and touring around. You also get a great view of the Queen Mary off the starboard side.

We finally went to our staterooms around 1:30 PM. The staterooms are decent size, if there is only two of you. The more guests you have, the physical room size doesn’t change, just the amount of beds. So if you take a cruise as a family of four in one stateroom (and you aren’t staying in a luxury suite), be prepared to feel quite crowded. The stateroom has chairs, a TV with satellite, a desk, a cabinet for your clothes, and stall shower. There is no refrigerator or internet in the rooms. Apparently they don’t have wireless antennas anywhere but in the internet cafe (which cost $0.75 per minute if you do the Pay-as-you-Go plan). If you have an iPhone, you can get internet from where we were at, Deck 4, Riviera Deck. But once we leave out of range of Long Beach, you lose internet, but you do retain cellular service (not from your provider though).

At around 4:30 PM, as we were lounging on Lido Deck, an announcement comes over the ship board speakers that we are all to take part in a mandatory safety drill and we had to go back to our staterooms to retrieve the life jackets. This was a very painful drill that took almost a hour to complete with the U.S. Coast Guard observing. The ship could not sail until everyone had taken part in this drill.

Afterward, we went up to on Deck 14, Sun Deck, going to the fore of the ship where we could watch the ship disembark from port. This was quite a sight to see and experience. I wanted to replay the Titanic scene (”I’m king of the world!”), but Andrea wasn’t so willing. Shame.

For dinner, we ate at the Destiny Restaurant. Our dinner time was 8:15 PM despite choosing 6:15 PM when we were asked online to select our desired dinner time. One thing we noticed (and was later unofficially confirmed to us), a vast majority of elderly people got the 6:15 PM dinner time. We arrived at 7:30 PM to wait in line (we were first in line!) and what a wait it was. It was until past 8:15 PM were we finally let in. The whole time, elderly people kept coming out. We hardly saw a single person or couple under the age of 50 come out. When we were finally seated, our waiter was Kittisak from Thailand and the table supervisor was Alexander from Peru. They both were great in greeting us and seating us. The tables seat ten people total. On the first night, we met two couples; one from Utah and the other from South California. The other two couples didn’t show up. Each night the menu items changed, you select a single item from the starters and an entree. Dinner was good and the conversation at our table was very lively.

For being our first time shooting with a shotgun and shooting trap and skeet, how did we do? I got a total of four destroyed birds and Andrea managed two. Not too bad for our first time.

As we spend today together, we will look back on our journey so far and also look ahead to the journey that awaits us. Today is a day that we appreciate where we were and where we are. Today we recognize that apart, we are strong, but weak and together we are invincible.

Today I recognize that I would have or want no other by my side. That despite everything I done right or wrong, Andrea continues to be stability for me when everything else in life seems turbulent. Andrea is my guiding light and my source of hope when all else seems bleak. Thank you my love for being there. I love you, happy first annivesary.

So you might wonder why i’m a Republican, also known as the Grand Old Party (GOP). You might think it’s ironic that I work for the Government (Republican’s believe in smaller government). You might also wonder how I could be a Republican living in, mostly Democrat, California.

Here’s why:

• Strong family values.
• Less Federal Government and more Local and State Government.
• Right to bear arms.
• Personal decision making rather than Government deciding for you.
• The value of hard work and not depending on the Government to provide for you.
• Oppose universal health care ( all the tax payers would pay for everyone else)
• Capital punishment ( I believe in the death penalty)
• School choice and vouchers for the education system.
• National security (strict foreign policy/ large role of military/patriotism/support of military on the offense)
• Free trade and capitalism.

…and the number one reason why i’m a Republican:

TAXES
REPUBLICANS BELIEVE that Americans should keep more of what they earn through lower taxes and that tax policy should not suppress incentive by penalizing success.

Some say the Republican Party is for the rich, but like Mike Huckabee stated,

“I’m not a Republican because I grew up rich, but because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life poor, waiting for the government to rescue me.”