Dave was the first to get married this year, so to celebrate we planned a guy’s weekend in Lake Tahoe.  I’ve never been there before, but have seen Dave’s video from his trips and it looked amazing.  It was as blue and awesome as I imagined which really lent itself towards taking a lot of very blue photographs.  I invested in a polarizing filter for my relatively new dSLR camera.  The weekend was filled with Kan Jam, wine, hiking and biking.  I took a ton of pictures so check out a few below and a couple of sets on Flickr too:

All of Dave’s Bachelor Party in Lake Tahoe (289 photos)
Best of Dave’s Bachelor Party in Lake Tahoe (53 photos)

The guys hiking at Lake Tahoe

Don and his new lobster friend

Wine + Grilling = Perfect Weekend

See C-Ville Wineries on Flickr.

Great weather at Barboursville

As you can imagine, the conference costs a decent amount of money, which allows them to bring in great speakers, and entertainment for the week.  This year, the big speakers were John Battelle, marketing guru Seth Godin, and The Killers!  They were awesome.  I hope to go again next year.  But enough of that talk – I just wanted to share a few pictures that I took…

Omniture Summit on Flickr

Seth Godin speaking at Omniture Summit 2010

View of the mountains from my hotel room

I woke up to this in the morning!

Killers playing at The Rail in SLC

Thanks to a recommendation from Andrew – I’ve just ordered these Audio-Technica active noise-canceling headphones for all my upcoming trips this year.  I’ve never had good headphones before, so I’m pretty excited.  They received a good review on iLounge also – so we’ll see how they are once I get them.

Autumn Tree, originally uploaded by jchin1.

Amanda and I went apple picking last weekend. It was a great Autumn day, and the leaves on the trees were perfect. On the way out of Hartland Orchards in Markham, VA – I snapped a pictures of this perfectly orange tree at the top of the hill with a clear blue sky as the backdrop. Check out all the pictures in my Apple Picking set on Flickr.

I’ve been wanting to go on this trip ever since we saw Sideways.  The idea was to go to Napa and Sonoma and check out a ton of wineries, but once we got over there we found that there was so much to do just in Sonoma.  There wasn’t any need to spread ourselves too thin.  We flew into San Francisco on a Thursday morning and stopped by Sausalito for a quick lunch at a great taco place called the Salsalito Taco Shop.

Salsas at the Salsalito Taco Shop

Quickly realizing that hanging out in Salsalito wasn’t the ultimate destination on our trip, we hopped back into the car and drove to Sonoma.  Unfortunately our slow trip up there made us miss the opportunity to do a tasting at a winery.  This worked out for the best though. While walking around the Sonoma Plaza we started formulating the wineries and restaurants that we were going to go to.

The first night we had a cheese plate at The Girl and the Fig (which was great, and we went back to The Girl and the Fig two more times just for either drinks or dinner).  Then we moved on and had a great meal at el Dorado Kitchen.  The bartender at TGATF told us to order the “crack fries” at eDK, which are fries cooked in truffle oil with parmesan.  They were awesome.  The food was really really good, but my favorite part of the meal was the Sauvignon Blanc that the waiter recommended to us from Rochioli, a local winery in Russian River Valley.  We liked it so much we decided to drive about an hour north to pick up a few bottles.

Sauvignon Blanc from Rochioli at El Dorado Kitchen

As you can see I’ve pretty much only talked about food so far.  This was definitely a vacation about relaxing, eating and drinking.

Friday was the big winery day, we visited four wineries…Ledson, Chateau St. Jean, VJB and Imagery.  The only one that left something to be desired was VJB.  VJB was located about 10 feet off Sonoma Highway, and didn’t give us that “we’re at a nice winery” feeling.  Out of this day, our favorite was Ledson.  Ledson had really great wine, and the winery was located at a huge castle.  Chateau St. Jean had an awesome garden area where we ate our lunch with some wine, and by the time we got to Imagery, our taste buds were tired but could still tell that the wine was very good.

Ledson Family Winery

Garden area at Chateau St. Jean

Moving onto Saturday, we made it to a winery that we had heard a lot about: Benziger.  Benziger put on a tram tour of the winery and wine caves.  Learning about how they make biodynamic wine was fascinating, and the caves were amazing.  We only saw about 10% of the underground caves, but walking amongst the barrels made us much more aware of the process that the grapes have to go through to become the wine that we drink.  Going on the special tour allowed us to taste some of their reserve wine, which I’m not sure if it was because we were drinking in an amazing setting or that the wines were that good.  I think it’s a little bit of both.

An amazing setting - The tasting room in the Benziger Caves

Oak Barrels in the Benziger Caves. Each barrel costs $1,000!!!

After a few hours at Benziger, we drove up to Rochioli.  Rochioli was tucked away in the Russian River Valley, but the interesting thing is that all their wine is grown right on the estate.  This can be uncommon for some wineries since they partner with vineyards in different areas to make different wines.  From what I remember, they only offered the Sauvignon Blanc and also a Pinot Noir.  That night we ate at another Sonoma favorite (the locals told us so) called Harvest Moon.  The restaurant didn’t have much seating, but the kitchen was directly viewable from almost any table.  It felt like you were in their kitchen.  Great food, and the first time I’ve ever tried Fiddleheads (ferns).

Relaxing at Rochioli

Dining at Harvest Moon. The chef is right there in the background!

After experiencing a lot of what Sonoma had to offer, we headed back towards San Francisco.  On the way, we did a hike at Muir Woods, then met up with Dave for dinner.  Oy…that was a long post.  But, the trip was everything I wanted it to be, and I can’t wait to go back and explore more of wine country.

In front of a Bacchus float...(with A&A)

I posted my pictures from Mardi Gras a few days ago on Flickr.  Check them out here.

Mardi Gras was awesome.  More than that, New Orleans was awesome.  I didn’t see anything more than the French Quarter, but I already know that I want to go back to visit not during Mardi Gras.  That city has a ton of character along with some great places to eat.  Since we were only down there for 3 days we only had time to do the typical tourist routine.  We hit up Cafe Du Monde for beignets and cafe au lait, Central Grocery for muffaletta sandwiches, drank hurricanes, bought hand grenades from Tropical Isle and caught countless beads from floats at the Bacchus Ball (complete with parade king Val Kilmer!).

Mardi Gras 2009 on Flickr.

IMG_6277, originally uploaded by ultraclay!.

Two NY trips in just a few months is a personal record for me. We caught the train out of Union Station Friday evening up to Penn Station and headed out to Brooklyn from there. It seems as if nights never end before 4am every time I go up to NY, which is awesome at the time, and then not awesome the next day. We also caught Chicago at the Ambassador Theater the next day to see a friend perform. She was great, and even gave us a backstage tour afterwards. Unfortunately we saw it Jan from The Office takes over one of the lead roles.

The attraction keeping us at the bar Friday night were two bocce courts. All bars should have bocce!

See the rest of the pics here on Flickr.

Vimeo

Paris - Eiffel Tower from our hotel room

I have been back from my trip to Europe for a little over a week now and I finally sorted through hundreds of pictures.  Amanda and I went to four cities in a 2.5 weeks: Paris, Berlin, Oswiecim/Auschwitz and Istanbul.  We flew around everywhere and were lucky enough to stay in some decently priced nice hotels.

I trimmed all the pictures down to about 400, but also made a “best of” set on Flickr that sums up the whole trip in 117 pictures.

I also took a ton of video, so I’ll be making a video of that as soon as I find some time.

Check out the pictures on Flickr:

Paris, France (8.20.08-8.23.08, 9.3.08-9.5.08) (128 pics)

Berlin, Germany (8.23.08-8.27.08) (95 pics)

Oswiecim, Poland (8.27.08-8.28.08) (24 pics)

Istanbul, Turkey (8.28.08-9.3.08) (155 pics)

Best of Europe 2008 Set (117 pics)

Also below are some of my favorite pics:

Paris - Champ de Mars at night

Paris - The Louvre

Berlin - Brandenburg Gate

Oswiecim - Auschwitz Concentration Camp

Istanbul - The Grand Bazaar

Istanbul - Basilica Cistern