An Unexpected Weekend in Wine Country

We spent this weekend in Sonoma, enjoying the quiet and beautiful scenery with some family. A friend of ours had an opening at his rental and we headed up Friday after work.

One of my favorite parts of the house we stayed at was the front door. The leaves were just starting to change color.

We chilled by the pool and backyard for a while. The lighting was beautiful and I couldn't help snapping a quick photo:

We wandered around downtown Healdsburg for a bit. It's a cute area with several shops, cafes and restaurants. We had lunch at the Chalkboard, where the the menu changes frequently and they serve tapas-style dishes made from local ingredients and homemade pasta. I think my personal favorite is their pastas. One of the best places to get ice cream and pie in town is Noble Folk. They have a unique assortment of flavors that's hard to choose from, including meyer lemon, toasted sesame + maple, pumpkin chocolate, lemon lavender, dutch cookie (the best one I've ever had), and several others.  

They also had pretzel cones, which looked pretty cool:

We also explored several antique warehouse stores. I've been keeping an eye out for tea cups and frames for my paintings. In terms of tea cups, they had sets from England, Ireland, and even Bavaria.  

One of the coolest sections we both enjoyed had old scales and cameras. Somewhere in the pile, we found a voltmeter too!

Here's Irving testing out the cameras. We found a few old Pentax, Nikon, and Canon cameras that looked in good shape. Someday, I hope we get to try film photography. I've been inspired by fine art film photographers like Jose Villa and Erich Mcvey for a while. It still amazes me that despite how far we've come in terms of digital photography, old film cameras are still better at capturing natural lighting scenes when digital cameras would start hot spotting or glaring. 

We ended the weekend enjoying some fresh pasta, roasted brussel sprouts, and margarita pizza at Pizzando. While the weather's been hot, the wind started to blow around golden hour and leaves started blowing into the wind. It reminded me why fall has always been my favorite season. Back to another work week tomorrow!