This July we had a chance to get away from the heat of Japan and spend some time relaxing with my parents in Glen Ellen. It had been a long time since I had been there, and I was curious to see the aftermath of the big fires in that area as well as catch up with events in my home town.
The first part of the trip was actually in Taipei, Taiwan. We got cheap tickets flying on EVA Air, and so on the first leg we had about 10 hours to kill in Taipei. Our luggage was checked through to San Francisco, so we could take the train into Taipei and enjoy some food tourism without worrying about dragging our bags around.
The train ride from the airport was very convenient, and helpful staff at the airport made sure that we were able to buy tickets and get to the correct train platform. From there we caught an express train that took just 40 minutes to get to the center of Taipei. It was my first time to ride this train, a train that my company built, and it certainly was nicer than the bus ride that we used last time.
Once we arrived in the city center we made a beeline for the noodle shop that Mamiko had introduced us to last time we were in Taiwan. We found it easily enough thanks to the GPS application on my phone, down a dirty and slightly dark alley lined with small open air restaurants. This was the kind of place where nobody speaks English, so we did the best we could – using gestures and interpreting the Chinese characters through the filter of our Japanese knowledge. We ordered two bowls of “beef noodles” – one with spices and one plain. Unfortunately, once they arrived we realized that we had ordered something different from what we had remembered. They were great – huge chunks of braised beef in soup with udon style noodles – but not what we had meant to order. Fortunately, the guy next to us received a bowl of “ja-ja men” which turned out to be the dish that we wanted to order, so we pointed and ordered what he was having. Then we faced down three big bowls of noodles and did them justice by finishing them.
The ja-ja men was just as good as I remembered. I’m not sure exactly how they make the pungent garlic meat sauce that is poured over the thick udon-like noodles, but it contains some meat, some beef fat, and loads of roasted garlic. I felt bad for whoever was going to sit next to us on the our upcoming flight.
From there we wandered to several points on our map – including Shilin Market. The market is quite large and we ate underground to avoid the heat. We picked a restaurant at random, and sat on tables covered with laminated bright yellow menus. People walked by and watched as others ate, and it was a lively place even in the late afternoon. Because we had eaten a few more bowls of noodles than we had expected it was a little tougher to pack in more food, but we did all right. Especially good were the shorompo – slightly different from the more common Hong Kong dumplings, but good in their own way. Less interesting were the gyoza – it tasted like the filling was more cabbage than meat, and the tangy sweet sauce on top didn’t rub me the right way.
Despite having a little more time available we decided to play it safe and head back to the airport, ensuring that we’d be in an air conditioned environment near some clean bathrooms. It was nice to explore the airport a little, and there was a surprising amount of shops even before passing back through security.
We caught our late night flight out of Taipei, and then it was about a 10 hour flight to San Francisco. The food on EVA Air was not the greatest, but they did have a big screen entertainment center on the seats in front of us, and the staff were generally friendly. The air conditioner was blasting pretty hard making the cabin quite cold (I’ve noticed that this is common in Taiwan in general – air conditioners are off or at full blast), so with the aid of a blanket I was able to get almost five hours of sleep which was a new record for me. We watched movies and some TV after that, and then we landed at our destination. After getting through immigration and customs we met up with my mom and dad who were waiting patiently outside the gate, and then we took the long drive home to Glen Ellen.
We spent a really relaxing week with my parents in the comparatively cooler weather. Besides catching up, playing chickenfoot every night and eating delicious homemade Mexican food we also fit in plenty of wine, beer and cheese tasting, and shopping. Our experience tasting wine at Imagery Winery and St. Francis was really nice, as well as a long drive north to taste wine and beer in Anderson Valley, at Anderson Valley Brewing, Roederer Estates, Navarro, and Toulouse Winery. We had a nice experience at Gloria Ferrer tasting sparkling wine turn into some kind of horror movie nightmare when we were chased away from our food by a swarm of flies from the fields next door. There are some bad points about eating outside, I guess.
We had dinner one night at Glen Ellen Star, a restaurant that I had wanted to visit for a long time. Kuniko and I are big on vegetables and they specialized in roasting various veggies in skillets in a big woodfire oven. The four of us sat at a table in the center of the lively restaurant and dug through five different veggie plates, two appetizers and two main dishes of pasta. Even the ice cream was excellent – we liked the bourbon maple ice cream the best, I think. Everything was good, and we even had a chance to talk to Erinn Benziger and her husband the chef, Ari Weiswasser.
Surveying the fire damage was a weird feeling. There was no pattern as to which houses escaped the fire and which were consumed, and by the time we arrived the land was growing up again with grasses and bushes filling in the gaps that the fire left. Some places were already being rebuilt, and it will be interesting to see the area after another couple of years. We were glad that our house made it through safely. My parents had done some landscaping to the front and back yards of the house, so it was nice to see the results as the plants have started to grow in to their new locations. Everything looked clean and beautiful, and the deer were right at home walking through and eating their fill of the fresh plants and bushes.
On our way one day to pick up a pizza at Mary’s my dad and I stopped in at Sonoma Springs, a new (to me) local brewery at the end of Petaluma Avenue in Sonoma. The beer was quite good, and I liked the atmosphere inside. We tried a couple of beers and I even took a beer back to Japan to give to a beer-loving friend.
Towards the end of the visit we went up to Benziger Winery to meet some old friends and some of my dad’s co-workers. It was good to see Joe Benziger, Ignacio, Jose, and Joaquin. It felt in some ways like no time had passed at all, and in other ways like a completely different timeline in my life. It was interesting to interact with Joe in a situation where he wasn’t my boss – just a guy I used to work with. Joaquin and I spent a long time talking and he sounded happy with his life. It was great to be back up there, but I am really happy that I have moved on from my Benziger days.
At the end of the week we packed up all our goodies into two new suitcases, and got ready to head back. The original plan was to meet Mark, Susan, Maya and Charlie at the San Francisco airport, as they had to return their rental car there. However, the plan was changed based on some travel troubles that they had experienced, so we ended up waiting for them in Glen Ellen. Our flight was at 1:00 am the next day, so we had the evening to make it down to the airport.
They showed up at around 8 pm, and so we had about 30 minutes to spend with Charlie and Maya before we left for SFO. Banzai stayed behind to watch the girls, and we drove down to the city in two cars without any trouble. Susan drove their rental car with Mark, Kuniko and I as passengers, and my dad drove his van with only our three big pieces of luggage as company. We followed the GPS to the car rental place and arrived just five minutes before the deadline of 10 pm, so far, so good. We stepped out to the curb to wait for my dad to show up, but he apparently took a wrong turn and couldn’t find us. I think part of the problem was that the car rental place we dropped off their car was in a different part of town, so we waited for about 20-30 minutes before changing the plan again.
The next step was to take the rental car shuttle to the airport, but the slightly odd (possibly on drugs?) driver only took us to another shuttle stop. The shuttles were packed because the airport rail system was stopped, so it made for a tight squeeze. Luckily we didn’t have to worry about any baggage. After some anxious moments with the clock ticking down, we arrived at the international terminal to find my dad waiting patiently with our luggage. Mark and Susan could sense our unease – we hate to have our fate out of our hands right before a long international flight – and they kept up plenty of conversation to keep our minds on other things. It was good to spend some time talking with them.
Once through immigration and security the only restaurant still open was a Japanese restaurant, so we ate edamame and a few pieces of sushi with our Sapporo beers until boarding. We were able to catch our flight to Taipei without any trouble, and it was a smooth flight back. I got a new record of eight hours of sleep on a twelve hour flight. I hope I can pull off something like that again during our next trip.
It was a great time with family and now we’re focusing on the next trip to Northeastern Europe and the Baltic states. Hard to believe it is just a couple of weeks away!
