California Day 5

Waking up to classical music our first morning in the bed and breakfast, I knew that I could easily get spoiled by it. I tried to sell Jay on the idea of falling asleep to it every night (instead of those irritating wonderful talk radio shows he listens to on his computer) but I’m not sure it worked.


We really weren’t sure what to expect at breakfast that morning. Our last B&B experience included an innkeeper who loved to talk politics. And just loved to talk period.

This go round, Candy (the B&B owner) was occupied in the kitchen preparing meals for a full house. Arbor Guest House has 5 rooms, and all were occupied for our entire stay. We were served coffee and juice (the poor girl had to keep refilling ours – Jay would down it as soon as it arrived at the table), as well as a fruit cup and a scone. This was all while we waited on the hot breakfast to arrive.

Before we sat down, the other couples started chatting with us. “What’s your name?” “Where are you from?” Everyone was very friendly. The couple from Washington DC was on their honeymoon and confessed to having met on the internet. Jay and I told them that we had met on MySpace – and then the Texas couple admitted that they too met online.

Jay and I both found it interesting that 3 of the 5 couples there had met through the same medium. Mostly because we had gotten our fair share of weird looks when someone asked “where’d you meet this new guy/girl?”

The winery tour that Candy had suggested was at a castle. For the price of the tasting, you also got a tour of the castle. Built in the 1990s, the owner took great pains to make sure it was as authentic as possible from the area – even flying in Italian artisans to teach the locals how to hand make the roof tiles.

After the tour we loaded up on souvenirs and headed out. Before we reached our car, two couples from our tour group stopped us and offered to get a picture of the two of us. We then proceeded to chat with them for around an hour about random crap.

For lunch, we headed to the castle’s sister winery, which also included a deli. Apparently crazy castle builder man started out with nothing and started his empire selling sandwiches out of the back of his van (that he also lived in).

After another tasting, we grabbed a sandwich and headed back to the B&B for our couples massage. Neither Jay nor I had ever had one, and I was very much looking forward to it. I didn’t tell Jay until the last minute because I was afraid he’d back out on me. I loved it, but since none of my muscles weren’t sore from exercise (I didn’t get a single workout in this trip) I thought about how great it would have felt if they were!

All of the B&B guests reconvened around 5 for hors d'oeuvres and wine. Just like at breakfast, we found plenty to talk about. Jay wanted to watch the Ohio University (his alma mater – not to be confused with Ohio State) game on ESPN, so we decided to order pizza and eat in the room.

Only he got the game times confused. It had started at 8 PM Eastern time, which meant by the time we got back it was already half time. After kicking himself a few times, we dove into the pizza and finished out the evening just relaxing.