Weekend Recap (aka the one where i talk about beer)

We packed a ton into our short weekend getaway. Most of our pictures are on the regular camera so I've yet to download them, but I thought I'd share a few that I took on my iPhone.

After we checked into our hotel on Friday night, we drove to the city for dinner. I had read about Frjtz on another blog, and knew I had to try it (hello, french fries are my favorite food on earth). The food was delicious!

california burger

fries!

The reason we ventured to San Francisco was for the Double IPA Festival, an event during SF's beer week. This is C's favorite style of beer and the festival offered 57 different varieties from a number of brewers. I know most of you don't care about beer, and I wouldn't either, but C enjoys it so it has become part of my life.

The weather could not have been more perfect on Saturday. Seriously, it was in the 70's and sunny all day. That's pretty miraculous for San Francisco (we experienced rain the following two days).

Here's what I have to say about the festival - C enjoyed himself :) After 20+ tasters of various DIPA's (with abv's ranging from 8-11%) I'm pretty sure he can't remember how we got back to the hotel! I actually had a lot of fun this year as well because they had a new feature - The Fabulous Frickle Brothers - makers of the most delicious fried pickle I've ever tasted!

On Sunday, we went back to the city to the Ferry Building as well as Ghirardelli Square (for my Kara's Cupcakes fix). The Ferry Building is this really neat indoor market with unique vendors. My favorites were Chris Cossentino's Boccalone and the super sweet bakery, Miette.

miette bakery case

cupcakes from kara's

l - r: passionfruit, banana caramel, carrot, ghirardelli choc

We continued the "beer" theme by heading to Petaluma to check out Lagunitas and then on to Santa Rosa for Third Street Aleworks and Russian River Brewing.

Russian River is well known for brewing the elusive Pliny the Younger. It comes out once a year, and very few people actually get to try it as it isn't bottled. You have to go to the brewery or be lucky enough to be at a bar/restaurant that got a keg of it. As for C, he has had it two years in a row at the DIPA Festival and on tap from The Bistro and Toronado.

russian river's beer menu

All in all it was a fabulous weekend!

Also, thank you to everyone who entered my giveaway. I really love all the connections and friendships I've made from the blogging community, and I wanted to do a giveaway to show you all how much you mean to me! I put all the entries into random.org's list randomizer then generated a random number (57 total entries). The winner is Cheryl E.

Cheryl, if you could send me your choice of prize plus a shipping address, I'll get your winnings to you soon (email sweetteadiaries @ gmail.com; 48 hours to contact me before a new winner is chosen)! Thanks again to everyone who entered.