Finger Lakes on the Fourth

So, over the fourth of July weekend, we took off out of the city with our neighbors and we spent three days camping at the south end of Seneca Lake, the deepest of the Finger Lakes. Overall it was a fabulous weekend, with plenty of hanging out on the lake (horse balls and beers), good food, good wine, a solid, if unspectacular hike (it would have been a lot better if it had not been so hot/buggy or if the waterfalls had been running) and, most importantly, some of the most beautiful waterfalls I have ever encountered. In the center of Watkins Glen, a small, tourist town at the south end of Seneca Lake, is Watkins Glen State Park, wherein a fabulous, paved trail winds its way around 19 gorgeous waterfalls ... which have cut their way down through hundreds of layers of rock creating an incredible, striated gorge which highlights the flowing water like nothing I have ever seen (you can see more pictures on my Facebook page). As you can see by the pictures, the running water and the shadows and sunlight mix to make up a really magical place.

But before I got to the waterfalls on the first evening at camp, we explored Cool-lea camp ... a nice, grassy parking lot of a camper area, with some wooded areas (one of which we camped in) by a smallish, algae-filled but pretty lake (Lake Cayuta). Just after we arrived, the neighbors got embroiled in a horse shoe competition and I headed out to see the falls. Dinner and drinking followed on my return, and afterward we enjoyed some local fireworks (which almost, but not quite, set the forest on fire).

The next day (the 4th)we spent the wine drinking good reisling and poor to average red wine at a variety of different wineries along the Eastern shore of Seneca lake. The area is known for its reislings, and we had a number of good ones, most memorably at Standing Stone vineyards, where the wonderful woman helping us taste was far and away the most pleasantly talkative person we met. She was also a great saleswoman (or it could be that that winery had the tastiest wines), because between the many tastes and the dips and spreads we were eating we ended up dropping a pretty penny for some excellent vidals, reislings and ice wines. All in all we hit I think five wineries before lunch, but Standing stone was definitely the most fun. After picking up lunches at Stonecat (catfish sandwich for me, quite good), we swam in Seneca lake, stopped back by Watkins glen and then enjoyed another excellent meal (burgers and chicken kebabs), before drinking our way late into the night. A fun and fabulous day, you can read more about some of the other wineries in this article my friend Ali wrote.

On the fifth, we got up relatively early, ate a quick breakfast and went out to a near-by hike ... which was nice but probably would have been a lot nicer if it had not been 97°C and really huid and buggy. And if the waterfall we were supposed to be hiking too had been running. Give huge props to everyone for sticking it out, because even though it was a pretty forest and a nice trail, it was a hot, tough day for that kind of exertion. I heard several "I cannot remember ever sweating this much" comments, and I have to say I was myself fairly disgusting. After the hike we rampaged an ice cream store and ate far too much (at least I did, the large was aggressively so) and then headed back to the lake, where everyone but Aviva and I relaxed and took a powder while we went back to see the waterfalls again. Still absolutely stunning. The last nights dinner was an excellent crab risotto Aviva masterminded, and then we turned in relatively early before heading back to the city. Great place, great food, great company ... fantastic weekend!!

December in the Golden State

After an exhausting autumn, Aviva and I left the Bronx to spend 2 weeks in California over the holidays, spending time with my parents and friends and some of her family as well. We flew out of La Guardia late on a Thursday and got into San Francisco after an easy flight. My friend Dave picked us up and we stayed at his beautiful new house in Burlingame for the next few days while we hung out with our friends Dave and Em. The next day we putzed around for a bit, eating the cookies and muffins that Aviva and Em had both made. We drove down to Sunnyvale to pick up Neal, and then spent the day wandering about Palo Alto, eating at the Mango Carribbean Cafe and then cruising by the house I grew up in to see the new, gigantic, edifice that has been built on the lot (the house I grew up in was 1800 square feet, the new place is 7800!!!!). We went back up to Dave and Em's, played a little Bacchi, and a friend picked Aviva and I up and we had dinner with Ben, Danny and Rinat at Zachary's in Berkeley, best pizza in the Bay Area. After pizza, Ben dropped us off in San Francisco, where we had some sake with Em and Lena then took BART back to Em and Dave's.

The next day we woke up and packed into Dave's car, not the beautiful but useless, 66' Mustang he dotes on and uses to commute 4 miles a day, but beautiful, quite useful Audi. We drove about an hour north into central Napa for some wine tasting in the Oak Knoll, Rutherford and Yountville regions. The first winery we stopped at was Trefethen, a smaller winery (although it still dwarfed the wineries we went to last summer on Eastern Long Island) with some nice Merlots and Cabs and a very good Chardonnay. We moved on to Mondavi to kill time before meeting up with Dan and Karla at a small market, where we all got sandwiches for lunch and I spent a lot time tasting fancy mustards.

We took our sandwiches to Flora Springs, an excellent winery (particularly their Trilogy wine) which we found out provides the red wine to the White House. Lunch was delightful, outside the tasting room on some stone tables in the lee of the vineyards. Beyond the sandwiches, we had gotten a number of cheeses, mustards, some foccacia and 2 bottles of excellent wine from the winery. We spent around an hour and a half eating, drinking and generally enjoying ourselves, then went inside to taste the wines we had not had with lunch. At this point everyone but Dave and Dan (the drivers) had gotten fairly sloshed and goofy, and I could not seem to keep my hands off of Aviva at this point. The man pouring our wine gave us quite a hard time about it ... but was also very funny and poured out a number of extra glasses of for us.

After leaving Flora Springs we unwisely stopped at Dean & Delucca ... one should never visit a luxury food and kitchen store while intoxicated. I somehow came out with a bottle of The Macallan at cask strength (The Macallan, an exceptionally smooth Speyside single malt that happens to be my favorite scotch) and a snickerdoodle, Aviva got some chocolate, Dave ended up with 3 bottles of wine and Karla and Dan lugged out a bag of several different things.

We stopped by one more tasting room, but I cannot recall which and while the wine we had there was my favorite on the day, the drunken conversation and the good company were the most memorable parts of that winery. We drove back to Burlingame, stopping at a grocery store to pick up some steaks and salad makings, and made dinner for everyone at Dave and Em's. Steaks and salad were the order of the evening, washed down with several bottles of wine and quite of bit of my newly purchased scotch.

Dinner was a raucous and enjoyable affair, and after we finished Dave started to make dark and stormy's (although these we mostly drunk by Dave and Neal) and we got out some games to play. However, we could not figure out which game to play the girls (Emily, Aviva and Karla) decided that we should put Neal up for auction in the unpredictable world of on-line dating. Being quite intoxicated, Neal did not have much of an objection to this and consented to us putting us up his profile on Match.com. However, we decided that this was not enough, so Dave held Neal down and we took pictures of his stomach and posted them on Craigs list as Abs of Neal. The drinking continued and Dan and Karla left some time later, to sleep at his parents house, and the evening settled out pleasantly, with Dave, Neal and I playing a game of indoor Bacchi using tangerines and crumpled paper balls.

The next day, we woke up and we dropped the girls off at the gym, then dropped Neal off at his parents place and I got Dads car from his house in Redwood City. Then Dave picked up Aviva and Em from the gym and we all had lunch at Dave and Em's before Aviva left for our trip up to see the Redwoods.