California Familying

We're enjoying our short but full trip to the East Bay of California. We're visiting with our daughter #1 and family. Plus there is the family of our Wife's older brother's son who live in the same town of Lafayette (in the East Bay area near Walnut Creek over the hills east of Berkley). These were the nephew and niece we saw in Bangkok Thailand this spring. And as a special treat, our niece who is Wife's older brother's daughter was in town too and we got to see her as well.

Today we had breakfast with the niece, went over to #1's and hung out outside nibbling cheese, bread and drinking wine for most of the afternoon. Then the nephew and family came over around 5 and we hung out and brought in pizza. It was a very relaxed family catching up kind of day.

Last night we went out for dinner with #1 and 1A into San Francisco via the BART rapid transit to a restaurant called Volta, a restaurant that serves French and Swedish fare...not fusion but selections from the classic cuisines of both. The food and service were very good, solid, if not spectacular. 1A said the one word the defined it was professional. The prices were I thought reasonable for the quality of food and service delivered. The wine list prices were very reasonable with lots of interesting selections toward the lower part of the wine list. The sommelier listen to me well and gave us a good selection at the price I was looking at.

Then when I he saw that I had ordered the marrow bones, he said kind of off hand that in the kitchen they liked to do a Chartreuse shooter with the bones after the marrow had been eaten. This sounded crazy to me knowing the sweet, herbal nature of Chartreuse but decided to give it a try (I mean I've eaten tepid pigs feet and balut eggs!). 

It was a fun experience and even #1 joined in. One of those 'I'll probably never do this again' types of things.