The Perfect Birthday

 

 

For some reason, my birthday celebrations are always more than two days long, and tend to be on the ridiculous side, thanks to my amazing hubby who's too good to me. I turned 26 in the east village of NYC with Jefe and our gorgeous hipster friends who got the whole quaint French bistro to sing happy bday followed by many drinks at great little bars in Williamsburg where they lived, 28 in Florence, Italy having the best meal of my life with El Jefe, and 30 at a huge house along the Russian River with 20 friends from MN, CA and OR who made the journey to celebrate with me and enjoy a debaucherous, fairly silly weekend of amazing food, hot tubbing under Redwood trees, wine tasting and laughing hysterically. And after that incredible weekend, Jefe and I took the best road trip ever up through Mendocino, The Redwood National Forest, Ferndale and up to Ashland, OR - one of my favorite places ever - then back down to SF for our close friend's wedding the following weekend. I would have put more photos up from our adventures but stupid Flickr decided to add some ridic feature where you can tag people and made it quite difficult to save photos onto your desktop..highly annoying, and they better fix this quickly or I'm canceling my account. Here are the pics from Russian River and Mendocino, The Redwoods and Ashland.


For the big 32 Monday, I had a quick meeting I could walk to in the morning, some cafe au lait chocolate - my new fave - at Java J's, a little more work at home and then an afternoon of total relaxation at Ivy Spa. I had a fabulous 80 minute mother-to-be massage - my first as a prego lady. If I had millions of dollars, I would get a massage every day. I love them. And if you like spas at all, you should be going to Ivy Spa because it is by far the best spa in town - like going on vacation, right downtown. I brought a book along and headed right to the relaxation lounge to put my feet up, get cozy with the blankets they provide, read and sip tea in my robe right after my massage. After a quick dip in the not-too-hot tub and a long, refreshing flower shower using all their luxurious lavender, tangerine, grapefruit scented products, I got ready for my fab bday dinner at Bar La Grassa.

Walking in, you'd never know you're in the space formerly known as the dark and overpriced Babalu. They have made excellent use of the warehousey, exposed brick space and created a cozy, neighborhood bar and restaurant that feels like a place where you'll always run into friends who live  and work in the hood, and we have. I plan to spend a lot of time there, but not a lot of money, since its pretty reasonable - you can get small versions of the pasta for $5-10 and they are quite filling - so really, all you need. I love the art deco chandeliers, dark wood and huge wine racks throughout the space. We sampled the beets with avocado and citrus, olive and goat cheese bruschetta, shrimp penne that doesn't sound very exciting but is seriously one of the best pastas I've ever had, and a cheese agnolotti with a browned butter sage sauce with my one celebratory glass of Malbec, topped off by crepes with salted caramel sauce and ice cream. YUM. I will definitely be going back and can't wait to try everything on the menu. Full and happy we walked 10 steps across the street and were home, where I got in my sweats and watched my DVRed Gossip Girl. Even though I wasn't in NYC, Florence or Russian River to celebrate, it was, The Perfect Birthday.