The day before, I met up with M, whom I met in Maine International Film School, who refused to take a photo with me, because he looks fat in photos. A problem I can identify with. Unfortunately, I also look fat in real life.
Anyway, we went down to Sausalito, had a ginormous salad. It was more the atmosphere than anything particularly beautiful in Sausalito. It was a nice little town – but it’s a tourist town, and to take a decent picture that says something about the place, is hard without it just being a snapshot of the place. So I didn’t take a any photos there. If I had driven a car, I would’ve driven up on the hill amongst the homes of locals to find something to take.
M had spent some time in Japan shooting his 12k short film and was telling me all about it and about his great Japanese film crew and the Russian composer on the film and all the difficulties of getting people together and the like.
After M dropped me off, I took an hour and a half walk from the Ferry Building to the home of the Giants, where they were having a game and walked past the SFMOMA back to Market and found the Montgomery BART back to T’s.
The next day, T and I went up to Napa.
It started to feel as if we were not in America any longer. On the 121, the vineyards are bigger and more commercialised.
We stopped by a local diner, at W Imola Ave, called Emmylou’s Diner. It was real nice to eat where the cops also eat.
The corned beef hash was very good, not too much corned beef. If you’re wondering why the portion is so untypically little, it’s because it’s only half the portion. The other half was on T’s plate.
We had lunch at Redd in Yountville, recommended by T’s musician sister, Ayn. The food was good in that the ingredients were fresh, the taste was light and well balanced, uncomplicated. But I think it was almost too balanced in that nothing really grabbed your attention and made you feel you had to come back here and here alone for your next visit. It was like having a conversation with a polite nice person with little opinion and PC views.
We had the tuna and yellowfin tartare, crispy roast duck that I felt was overdone and a tad stringy with foie gras balls, eggplant flower tempura and a raspberry cobbler.
Returning via the Silverado Trail, we discovered the smaller vineyards and strawberry fields and plums and pears along the way.
Then it was time to pick the kids up and for me to pack up and leave the USA, what has been my home for over a month.