Tag Archives: travel

Travel

Woodinville: A How-To for Seattle’s Favorite Boozy Backyard

Wine country in the fall. Photo courtesy of Flickr.

With the holiday season on the horizon, there’s a chance you’ll have your share of out-of-town guests. And once you’ve gone through the usual runaround, e.g. Space Needle, the aquarium, EMP, next on your list should be wine tasting. Wine tasting in Woodinville, to be specific.

Washington grows some truly great grapes, many of which are appreciated and sought after all over the world, and it’s worth the short car trip to discover them with friends. While a trek to Eastern Washington or even Willamette Valley would be fun, this time of year, the weather might hinder a day trip. Factor in the cost of the drive and the possible overnight stay and suddenly you might wish your guests weren’t staying so long. So instead, consider Woodinville Wine Country.

About 30 minutes from Seattle in the Sammamish River Valley, Woodinville has quietly but surely trucked along into becoming one of Washington’s primo oeno destinations. While almost all the grapes are grown in Eastern Washington, Woodinville is home to tasting rooms for over 90 wineries, similar to the dozens of other wineries that find it makes sense to pour and sell on this side of the pass. Many of the brands are grouped together in one location, making it super easy to park and (tipsily) walk to several places.

We did the preliminary research, so you don’t have to. Just tip back that glass and enjoy the trip with these tips and ideas for optimal wine navigation.

Tips for Wining:

  • It goes without saying, but bring along a designated driver, or hire a car service or limo. When everyone in the party chips in, a limo is often a more affordable — not to mention a hell of a lot more relaxing — option than driving yourself.
  • Ask the sommelier or tasting room manager for their recommendation for the next drink. Many wineries and tasting rooms have sister companies, or insider information and discounts for those who stay within friend groups. Typically, once you start drinking, follow the rabbit trail of recommendations and, chances are, you’ll only have to pay for the first flight.
  • Check winery websites for special events, hours, and locations. Not only can this help you save a buck (gas, special discounts), but it can also help you map out a route so you don’t have to make a plan when you’d rather just relax.
  • Take a notebook to write down the wines you tasted, and most importantly what you liked. Pencils not your thing? Download a tasting app that can help you chart the specific notes you pick up, and impress your friends.
  • Make sure you take time out for lunch and/or dinner. Too much wine on an empty stomach can cause… wait for it… too much whining in some people. Consider Woodinville’s Barking Frog or Purple for some drunchies.

Finally, the wine itself. Here are few of our favorites to check out:

DeLille Cellars

Known for their Doyenne and Grand Ciel, plus several other fantastic blends, they also participate in a cork recycling program.

Betz Family Winery 

Known for the Rhone-inspired wines, any bottle of Syrah from the Betz family will have you swooning.

Efeste

Home of the bold Tough Guy Bordeaux and the reasonable (and ever so delicious) Final Final Red Blend.

Januik/Novelty Hill

A fan of red and white? Januik/Novelty Hill produces both. As a bonus, you can score some delicious brick oven pizza here.

If that’s not enough to whet your whistle, use this map as a resource. Enjoy your trip to Seattle’s favorite boozy backyard, and bottoms up. Cheers!

Still thirsty? Check out The SunBreak for more arts, culture, food & drink, and the like. Go on, make our day. 

News, Travel

Okay, Where’s Our Trip to Paris, Capital One?

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Does anyone know any of the people shown here? During the big snowstorm of January ’12, Capital One, they of the Viking hordes who demand to know what’s in your wallet, set up a surprise encounter down near the Convention Center on Pike. They “dropped” a wallet containing a Capital One card on the sidewalk, and waited for someone to come by and pick it up.

If you did, voilà, instant Parisian street scene. (That’s the real, existing crêperie they’ve taken over, yes?) “What is this?” asks one befuddled Seattleite. “You’re in France!” replies the not-entirely-convincingly-accented waiter. “I’m in France,” repeats the Seattleite. “Oui! Mais oui!” says the waiter. “Awesome,” says the Seattleite, nonchalantly, ready to go with it.

This is all to persuade us to tell you about Capital One’s Venture travel card–Double miles! No blackout dates!–as if it’s news of some kind, and as if they didn’t just spend a million more dollars than they had to instead of just advertising on The SunBreak, which anyone can do for $100 per month. Sheesh.

Anyway, we will pass along the “news” that you can still enter to win a dream vacation by cropping yourself into an iconic destination, and explaining why you ought to go. Your entry will be voted on, so think viral, and then count the days until March 9, 2012, when the contest ends and the winner-picking begins:

At the close of the travel contest on March 9, a panel of judges will review the top-50 highest scored submissions and narrow down the field to 10 finalists. Travel expert Randy Petersen, of www.flyertalk.com, will then select the grand prize winner. Other prizes will include a $1,000 travel voucher for the most viral entry of the contest and 25 noise canceling headphones given to the top new five viral entries submitted every week.

Environment, News, Transportation

Willie Weir on the Benefits of Extra-Cycling Perception

Willie Weir, noted Seattleite, columnist for Adventure Cyclist magazine, and KUOW commentator, gave a high-energy, hilarious, and ultimately moving presentation at REI tonight, reminding a group of several dozen Cascade Bike Club attendees why he loves the tastes, smells, sounds, touches, and sights of bicycle travel, even after 60,000 miles in the saddle.

Weir’s friend Larry Murante, a remarkable Seattle singer-songwriter, opened and closed the presentation with a live performance of a pair of original songs.

Weir, who has cycled around every corner of God’s green earth, is a triple threat: a trained actor, skilled photographer, and talented writer who has now published two volumes of cycling memoirs. A slim man, not particularly tall, he had the crowd in stitches recounting, in his “Why I love the tastes of bicycling” section, his tale of gorging for five hours at a $5 all-you-can-eat buffet somewhere in Wisconsin, then hoisting his distended belly back into the saddle, and—a few hours later—inveigling his way into more free food at a big family-reunion picnic he came across in a park.

When it came to the sights of bicycling, he shared a dazzling photograph he took of himself, his partner, and their bikes, reflected in the eyes of a smiling boy he met in Latin America. And he impressed many with the biggest life lesson he’s learned from bicycle travel: the importance of slowing down so that a fleeting touch can become embrace; how simply stopping to ask a stranger directions can turn into a week-long encounter, with memories that last a lifetime.

Travel can be local, too: Weir has a blog about “Life in Seattle without a car“–here he is rating the new Mountains-to-Sound Trail, which, incredibly, after Brian Fairbrother’s death, offers cyclists the choice of a downhill sidewalk that feeds to a set of stairs.

Bicycling is not only the most energy-efficient form of transportation yet devisedit focuses the senses, as Weir describes, in a way that offers a great lift to the human spirit. That may sound grandiose, but any seasoned bike traveler will say the equivalent. And although it’s easy for bike travelogues to deal in clichés or stoop to bathos, Weir, who’s an old pro at storytelling, managed to remind everyone in the room why they love riding a bike.

Many thanks to Cascade Bike Club and to REI for offering the 2011/12 Cascade Presentations series, guaranteed to whet any Seattle cyclist’s appetite for adventure and the thrill of the open road.

News, Travel

What To Do When You Leave Your iPad on a Plane

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The short answer is, Give up all hope of ever seeing it again.

As Consumerist puts it: “Airline Employees Really Don’t Care That You Left Your iPad On The Plane.” It is, of course, something that you would never do in the first place, happy person still in possession of your iPad. You will always be extremely careful with your iPad, and listen carefully to that reminder about making sure you have collected all your items. But let this Consumerist story be a lesson to you–once you’ve left the plane, your iPad is likely gone. To disabuse anyone of the notion that airlines have the time and staff to look for an iPad–more Consumerist stories aside–I can offer my own experience.

On my way back from Puerto Rico, flying US Airways, I had a connecting flight in Charlotte, where I changed planes for the final leg to Seattle. I was in the middle of reading Game of Thrones on the Kindle app, and so I stuffed my iPad into the seatback in front of me. I also pulled out my camera–since the view out my porthole was gorgeous–and spent the entire flight happily clicking away. As we pulled up to the gate, the person in the seat behind me dropped their phone, and had me look under my seat for it. Then I grabbed my camera and the extra lens, packed up, and left the plane.

About an hour into the Charlotte-Seattle flight, I reached into my bag for my iPad–and suddenly remembered stuffing it into the seatback of my last plane. Still, it’d been only two or three hours, so no reason to panic. That was the night of December 17, 2011.

Now, I’m a little astonished by my naivete. I actually had the idea that US Airways staff might, from the plane, alert the cleaning staff about my iPad. It wasn’t as expensive as my camera, but with the Logitech wireless keyboard I was using as a faceplate, it would set me back over $700 to replace. Maybe insurance will help cover that–but what starts to eat at you is the worry about what sensitive information might be accessible. Was there any? Who can be sure? It’ll lock, right? How impossible is a four-character code to break?

The flight attendant did not drop everything to alert US Airways Lost & Found HQ of my emergency, you probably have guessed. People–other people, not you, happy person still in possession of their iPad–forget and leave their iPads on the plane all the time. I was supposed to tell the agent at the gate when we arrived in Seattle, which I did. She directed me to the Lost & Found at SeaTac’s baggage claim area, where I filed an incident report sufficient to ID my iPad, complete with the seat number where it was located.

But, again, this information was not going to be communicated to anyone who might walk onto the plane and check the seatback in question. If an iPad was found by a cleaning or maintenance crew, and they noted the seatback it came from, it might help. I left SeaTac with the number for the US Airways Lost & Found at the Charlotte airport (704-359-3075), and called and left a message the next morning, giving them the pertinent details.

They called back, and said a) they don’t normally call back to say they have found nothing, and b) they hadn’t found my iPad. I was to give them another day and call again. Which I did. Still nothing, though they had several other iPads on hand that they powered up to check if any were mine. (The Lost & Found has an iPad power cord to deal with dead batteries.)

It was in the course of these phone calls that I learned no one was ever going to just walk onto the plane and check the seatback for me. If a cleaning crew didn’t find my iPad, it would have to wait for a passenger to notice it. An added wrinkle, with iPads, is that if you’ve enabled Find My iPhone tracking software, you can tell if someone has used it to connect to the internet, and even determine its location. (Mine remains obstinately offline.) But knowing that it wasn’t being used made me suspect it hadn’t simply been stolen, but perhaps had traveled with the plane to another airport.

After an hour or so on the phone with US Airways, I learned that they were unable to tell me where my plane had gone to next. This was a little hard to credit, as was their assurance that my missing iPad would have been found before the plane took off again. But in any event, all items unclaimed from US Airways Lost & Founds after about a week make their way to what I fondly imagine to be a Raiders of the Lost Ark-style warehouse-sized Lost & Found in Charlotte, NC. You email them a passenger property form (pdf), and, in my case, in two days they send you an email that reads:

Dear [MvB]:
Thanks for contacting US Airways. I’m sorry to hear that you misplaced an item during your trip.
I reviewed your Lost Property file and your iPad has not been located at this time. I’m sorry the result could not have been better.
[MvB], if we do find your item, we’ll be sure to contact you right away. Thanks for flying with US Airways.
Sincerely,

Goodbye, iPad. For two and half months, we shared some times I know I’ll never forget. Maybe you’re in a better place.