Vacation: Part 1: Owl Cafe: 02/19/07
Over this 3-day weekend we took our first vacation as a family of four. I've been posting photo montages of each place we stopped on my livejournal site but I plan to post a more in depth description of what we did here, one stop per day.
As this was a family vacation to de-stress we opted to have a leisurely start on Saturday morning. The first step in this was to avoid packing until Saturday morning. I'm usually a compulsive packer who has to get most everything packed the night before.
With Harriet getting us up early every morning anyway, we had plenty of time to get packed even with giving Sean time to watch his favorite Saturday morning cartoons. Ian and Sean helped pack by picking out the clothes they wanted to wear on the trip. It made the packing process fast and fun!
The first item on our agenda was the Golden Gate bridge. I can't recall if Sean has even been across it before and if he has been, he doesn't remember. It was certainly Harriet's first time. Before we could go across that bridge, though, we had to fight our way through the "maze" and get across the Bay Bridge.
Thankfully Ian was driving. He got us across the Bay Bridge and through San Francisco expertly. If I were driving, I'm sure we would have gotten lost. I normally have a good sense of direction but San Francisco makes me go stupid in that department.
By the time we finally got across the "Big Red Bridge" as Sean called it, we were almost ready for lunch. We decided to drive to almost the Sonoma county line. Ian had thought about lunch in Healdsburgh but with it being a 3-day weekend, the city was busy, parking looked bad and we didn't want to shark for a spot. So we headed on to Cloverdale.
Cloverdale ended up being the perfect place to stop. It has the idea Sean restaurant, the Owl Cafe. Outside the restaurant's sign is a huge neon owl and inside the place is decorated with numerous owl paintings, sculptures and knickknacks. The food is a little expensive for diner food but the service is friendly and the atmosphere fun. We liked the place so much we ended up stopping on our way home today.
485 S Cloverdale Blvd
Cloverdale, CA 95425
cloverdale | sean | vacation | owl | restaurant | golden gate bridge
