California Girl

Turns out I'm well suited for floating whimsically round the Californian vineyards, amidst sun-dappled hillsides of young grapes, picking rich purple blackberries to be eaten on the spot, causing sunbathing lizards to scatter. I lie in the sun beside a deliciously cold river, watching as bees collect honey from flowers inches from my face, and tiny fish nibble at my feet if I decide to go in the water. Ten days have slipped by in utter bliss, and I can summarize my activities with a few bullet points as follows:

* working on my non-existent tan (I am woefully English Rose through and through, and I am determined to remedy this. I will be a Californian/Caribbean tanned goddess before this time is up)...sunbathing beside the most beautiful pool I have ever seen - the perfect size, rocky so that I feel like I've discovered a natural pool in a beautiful glade somewhere (which happens to have a stunning 360 vista of beautiful vineyards), thrillingly chilled, with my own My Little Mermaid rock to dive off. Oh heaven. I shall sorely miss this particular pool
* whilst sunbathing, reading vast numbers of books - my mind is much broader than when I arrived here
* pottering into town on a little Miss Marple style bicycle. Now this may sound perfectly normal to those of you situated in England, or used to careering round Cambridge on your bikes, but let me assure you that the sight of Miss Marple (/Pinchbeck, but Marple for our purposes here) causes much merriment amongst the citizens of Healdsburg, California, who have been gawping at me as I pootle past. So I have been thoroughly enjoying the inherent eccentricity of 'the bike' as transport option, and exploring the town accordingly
* eating (oh, you know me too well) - my favourite restaurants here are, in order: 1) an outstanding Mexican - surprisingly lacking in cosmopolitan London, 2) stunning Sushi - Californian rolls to die for 3) Willie's seafood (this Willie chap seems to have really got around in the states...he's everywhere
* discovering the best ever frozen yoghurt concoction (fyi - vanilla yoghurt, raspberry sauce, choc chips and fresh blueberries)
* realizing suddenly that all fruit tastes better here - blackberries taste like real blackberries, blueberries taste like real blueberries, peaches taste like real peaches, cherries taste like rea...ok you get the picture - the fruit is just so darn, achingly good here, I honestly do not know how I will cope without.
* doodling/drawing/writing - some cracking pages in my notebook have arisen from my American meanderings, though I do say so myself.
* swimming in big, wide, open, American rivers, and scrambling up river rocks
* reminiscing as various sights and scents take me back to my childhood in the States - the warm smell of wood chips heating in the sun; butter oozing delightfully into the nooks and crannies of a perfectly ripe sweetcorn; the tart tang of fresh lemonade, ice popping and clinking in the glass; the promising plastic snap of fruit rollups - a pressed fruit pancake sweet (choccablock with E numbers no doubt) which both my brother and I still go misty-eyed over all these years on

There were, however, a couple of distinct breaks in my hazy, lazy routine...

1. Linda & Lex - Detective Duo - let no stone be unturned
It was too tempting: Linda (one half of my ever generous, extraordinarily kind hosts) kindly offered for me to accompany her on a jolly jaunt down to San Francisco, with a view to us trying to find the house my family used to live in. A mission! And of the type which I am rarely capable of refusing - nostalgia hunts.

We came.
We saw.
We conquered.

Oh yes. 23 years on, and the trickles of memory still haven't completely succumbed to the countless other memories of other houses in other cities/countries/continents which battle to replace them in my increasingly age-addled mind.

I whooped and stood victorious outside the house. The gardeners round and about stopped and stared at a mad English woman doing a victory dance in a neighboring house.

Detective through and through, I obviously have evidence - and will post the photos in due course. This may, of course, be the point at which my parents banish all of my self-congratulatory statements and tell me that this is, in fact, not our old house. But if this is the case then rest assured I won't let any of you know.

The rest of our city trip was spent rewarding ourselves with lunch, a beauty salon session, and late afternoon coffee. Well, we worked for it!

2. Golden Gate Gawping
There was collective dismay amongst the Wilkie family at the (so I'm told) limited view of San Fran that I had gleaned the previous weekend and, determined as they were that I shouldn't exit the states with such a woeful impression, I was dutifully whisked off on the world famous 'Bob Wilkie tour' of 'The City by the Bay'.

Well.

Turns out the BW City Tour should charge out - it was phenomenal. Bob (the other half of my afore-mentioned ever generous, extraordinarily kind hosts) gave me a city overview like you couldn't possibly achieve clutching a Lonely Planet - with liberal sprinklings of social, historical, geographical and economic titbits throughout. We really spanned the length and breadth of the city, turning it inside out, and upside down - we skimmed harbourside neighbourhoods whose pastel-coloured, varied architecture have appeared in various films and soap operas; we soared skywards up breathtakingly steep hillside summits, catching views known to other tourists, and others which required a bit of insider knowhow.

The winds were in our favour (literally) as there was not a whisp of fog in sight, and the sun blazed non-stop overhead. Which of course made for spectacular and full capacity views of the Golden Gate bridge. Looking back on the city from the other side of the bridge at the end of the day, I really got to see to what extent we really had covered the entire city, spread out in front of us like a picture perfect map.

So, it's official, I am now a San Francisco expert. Ask me any question you like. Go on. I know about the beatniks, the hippies, the earthquakes, the piers, the ships, the parks, the gardens, the museums, the gold, the bridges, the views and the galleries. Lonely Planet - know your limits!

Of course, there's a food story to end all food stories in amongst this, thus securing San Francisco a position safely amongst my top three favourite cities so far on my visit:
The Yank Sing Dim Sum Restaurant. (reverent tones must be adopted throughout whilst reading this paragraph, even for those of you reading at work). O Dim Sum. Food of my childhood.

I learned to use chopsticks practically before I could mulch mashed banana, and I consider myself pretty much a connoisseur of the divine little dumplings. But this place. Oh boy. Let me take a moment:

• Pork & Ginger steamed dumpling twirls - now, there is an art to this which the little waitress was kind enough to share - carefully lift it out of the bamboo basket with your chopsticks so as not to tear it. Then pick some slices of ginger out of the ginger/vinegar sauce (bright red). Pour a tiny spoonful of the vinegar sauce over the dumpling allowing it to pool at the bottom of the spoon, then puncture the dumpling with your chopsticks so that the pork and ginger juices mix with the red vinegar. Then, and only then, eat. Exquisite.
• Deep fried prawn and coriander wrap - crisp wonton pastry surrounds sweet and tender giant prawns, shot through with coriander stalks which inject a jaunty juiciness into the shrimp
• Siu Mai - little pork dumplings found in most good dim sum restaurants
• Ha gau - delicate prawn dumplings, again found in most good dim sum restaurants

The way to a girl's heart. San Francisco, San Francisco, I am yours and yours alone.

I'm missing this place already.

A heartfelt thank you to all of the Wilkie family - Bob, Linda, Nick and Lizzie (and Sage) (and the pygmy ponies) - for carting me round, feeding me delicious meals at home and taking me for fantastic meals out, spoiling me with all of my favourite American treats, giving me personal tours of vineyards and imparting wine-tasting knowledge, loaning me endless books, introducing me to 'What Not to Wear', imparting wisdom, swimming in rivers with me, loaning me your bikes/cars/local knowledge, introducing me to Powells/SnoBunny and most of all going out of your way to make sure that I remember California for a thousand right reasons. I have had a spectacular time here. xxx