Italian Staycation - Day 2 - A Bike Ride

We had the rare opportunity to break away this afternoon and do a long bike ride through the Dry Creek Valley, just the two of us.  So I gathered together all my protective clothing, most importantly, my neon flowered flip-flops, and set out on a 20 mile *peddle* through the countryside.

Daddy didn't want me to get run over by a tractor and insisted I wear a helmet.  Fair enough, but I always insist on wearing a brimmed hat.  The outcome looked like this:

Not sexy.  And yet I swear it took everything out of the man not to dry hump my leg all day. ;-)

The temperature was an ideal 84 degrees and so we peddled and chatted, chatted and peddled until we reached Healdsburg in time for lunch.

We had hoped to try the new SpoonBar at the h2 Hotel, but were disappointed to learn it was closed for lunch on Tuesdays.  So we made reservations for dinner instead, and walked around oh-ing and aw-ing all the great landscape, architectural and interior details.

Just outside the restaurant's entrance was this incredible work of art paying homage to, what else, the spoon. The sound of water drizzling down a wall balancing hundreds of teetering spoons was just so sweet and calming.

Inside the lobby, I had a seat on a multi-patterned Missoni couch (when are they not?!), and looked beyond some highly lacquered coffee tables of reclaimed wood to a stunning piece of art by Stephen Galloway. It all tied in very well with my flip-flops, don't you think?

On the way home, I took this picture:

I just love the sight of an endless field of agriculture, interrupted only by a barn's corrugated metal roof.