We’ve been celebrating John’s birthday lately. He turned 61 which is, of course, a prime number and worthy of celebration. The first thing we did was go to Denny’s for the free breakfast. This is actually kind of embarrassing because I think of Denny’s as kind of a lowlife place for geezers to go. But since we fit at least one of those categories and because it was free, we went. Given the free breakfast is one of the Grand Slam breakfasts, I figure Denny’s isn’t planning on giving out too many of these to the same person. With a couple of eggs, breakfast meat, and a choice of other high cholesterol favorites, they probably figure that anyone who eats it often won’t last too long.
Breakfast at Denny’s
The next thing we did was go to the Rose Hotel for drinks (no, not right after breakfast!) The Rose Hotel is owned by the (John) Madden family and is a boutique type hotel right in downtown Pleasanton. I’d like to stay over some night but it’s hard to justify. They didn’t seem to be doing much business but we enjoyed ourselves. Later we went home and made fish tacos as the birthday dinner.
Drinks at the Rose Hotel
Since we are celebrating all week, on Wednesday we went with Karen and George to Lunardi’s (an upscale grocery store) for wine tasting. What a deal! For your $20 admission you get to taste lots of wines and also there are great snacks. We tried Opus One, Rombauer, Sterling, Provenance and many more. We liked the Rombauer merlot the best. Everyone was friendly and accommodating. We also tried a chocolate caramel torte by Three Senses which comes frozen and is really outstanding.
Lunardi’s wine tasting
Then because moderation is never enough, we went to The Crown, an English pub in downtown Danville. John and I shared fish and chips. We were pretty full from our Lunardi’s adventure.
So we are up to four celebrations. But we haven’t had the family one yet. That is scheduled for September 25th and will be a joint party for Ryan and John. A continuing Happy Birthday to John!
At the Crown