I was in Cabo San Lucas last week, hence the dearth of posts. I was there for a stiletto ninja training workshop, aka rest, relaxation, food, drinkies and fabulousness.  I committed the cardinal blogger sin, you know what I mean, don’t pretend you don’t. Yes, I forgot my camera. Ok, so I brought along the video camera, which helps, but still! You will sadly miss out on all the enticing foodgasms I experienced in Cabo, but I may just have to feature albondigas in a future post they were so freaky-deaky good.  Meanwhile content yourself with a video short of a few of the foodie fashionista finds I stealthily unearthed while streetwalkin’ in stilettos through the cobbled avenidas of Los Cabos. Loves you til next time, and what a good time it will be, xo, l.

The title is erroneous right off the bat, but Clippertrip just doesn’t have the same ring to it as roadtrip.  The Clipper is the nautical vessel one takes from Seattle to Victoria. It is essentially a high-speed shrunken version of a ferry, though it feels eerily like an airplane inside.  In any case, the whole fam hopped the Clipper for the two hour jaunt up to Victoria for the weekend as I had a half marathon to run on Sunday.  We spent Saturday tooling around Victoria- this is a city I could really get into.  I pictured it as a quaint little burg lost in time. It actually was very cosmopolitan and wore the inevitable rustic charm that comes with being a seaside tourist town known for High Tea with understated cool.  Off the main drag, the shops were edgy and on-trend and the locals could not have been nicer. 

There were no dearth of dining options; however it being marathon weekend I knew I wanted to steer clear of the herds clamoring for plates of linguine in all the Italian joints, so I chose French.  This may not have been the wisest meal to consume the night before running 13.1 miles, but I was very happy with my time so I’ll leave carbo-loading to those who wish to indulge in bland potatoes and limp noodles.  We selected Matisse based on its reputation as one of the finer French restaurants in town, and we came away quite pleased. 

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In recent years, there has been a frenzied scramble to convert once-lucrative but now too-costly-to-maintain fruit orchards into money-making vineyards in Washington State.  Because economics was the driving factor behind many of these conversions, we saw a lot of behemoth production facilities churning out “approachable” wines (read: sweet, white cheap stuff) from immature vines in order to cash in on the wine craze perpetuated by films such as Sideways.  Touring wine country has never been easier, with the Napa Valley adopting the Disneyland for Oenophiles approach charging upwards of $20 per tasting at movie star-owned estate vineyards reachable by stretch limo, train, and I’m sure eventually hovercraft.  I imagine plans for a wine-themed park complete with a floating river of red called the Merlot Meander.  States beyond California are quickly following suit, and Washington is no exception.  I see the fundamental difference between the vineyards in the U.S. and those of the great winemaking regions in France, Italy, and Spain as time.  There is simply no way to rival the old world in terms of established character, which is not to say we cannot produce world-caliber wines, which we certainly do.  We simply need to be mindful not to turn the experience into a soulless affair more about pumping out bottles of two buck chuck than great Brunello. Read more