Mendocino and the Didjeridoo: Part One

First things, first: I know that "didjeridoo" is misspelled. It's not my misspelling, but I'll get to that in a moment.

My marriage to my wife just became legal. No, no, no... It's been legal, but, now, it's legal drinking age! So, you know, my marriage can legally go out, now, and get shitfaced.
Wait! This is coming out all wrong. This joke was so much better in my head. Which is what my wife said after I made it the third or fourth time.
Look! It's funny to me, okay!

For our anniversary, we decided to go spend a couple of days in Mendocino (the town, not the county, though the county, too, since Mendocino is in Mendocino county (go figure, right?)). The process for this decision is rather longer than can be explained easily since it's actually the culmination of years, but it boils down to the fact that I had only ever been to Mendocino (town) once, because we stopped there for coffee on the way to Fort Bragg some years ago. Mendocino is an ultra-popular tourist spot, and my wife figured I should experience it at least once so that I could understand...

Let me be clear, she didn't want me to understand why it's so popular; she wanted me to understand what I can only call her disdain for it. Her way of saying it is, "Mendocino is extremely overrated."

However! It is on the coast, and the coast out here is beautiful, so there would be that, at least.

My wife had a specific set of desires from the place where we stayed but, without going into that story, I messed all of that up by being distracted by the cost on the places we were looking at despite the fact that she told me not to worry about the money this time. 21 years of marriage doesn't happen every day, after all! We ended up staying at the Didjeridoo Dreamtime Inn which, really, had none of the things she wanted beyond the fact that it was a place to stay.

The short of that is that the Didjeridoo is a bed & breakfast, and I have developed a thing for B&Bs over the last several years, and the reviews for the breakfasts at Didjeridoo were pretty good despite an overall average rating, at best. To be fair, none of the places we were looking at got better than an average rating unless they actually crossed the don't-worry-about-the-cost line to where we had to actually worry about the cost. [I'm sorry; there's no place in Mendocino (the town) worth $400/night. Or, really, even $200/night. (I'm not really sorry.)]

So let's break all of this down...

First, there's the issue of the name: Didjeridoo Dreamtime Inn. Why is it misspelled? I don't know. And I don't know if the name came with the inn when the current owner came into possession of it or if he named it that. I know two things:
1. The inn has a funky room numbering system that the owner says was in existence when he got the Dreamtime. He left the room numbers on the doors even though they make absolutely no sense.
2. So, maybe, the inn was already named "Didjeridoo" when he got it? But, dude, correct the spelling. Seriously. And, if it was his misspelling: Correct the spelling. It's not quaint; it's stupid.

And, yet, it was my suggestion as a place to stay. I don't know what I was thinking, because the misspelling should have been a hard no for me, but, for some reason, I let it slide.

Second, there's the issue of parking. In looking at various places to stay, one of the amenities many of the places mentioned, including the Didjeridoo (though I can't remember where I saw that, now), is that they include free parking. Or just parking. Or some such. I found that a bit weird because what place wouldn't have parking, right? Sure, there's no street parking in my neighborhood but, then, my neighborhood isn't a tourist attraction, either. If it was and we were making money from people coming to our neighborhood, we'd figure out some way to accommodate the parking issue. That's just good business.

At any rate, we got up to Mendocino on Wednesday night, but relatively early Wednesday night, and found parking on the street in front of the Dreamtime and I didn't think much of it. I did wonder in passing where this available parking for the B&B was supposed to be because I didn't see anything that looked like parking for it, but we'd parked so I shrugged it off.

The next night, though (that would be Thursday for those of you paying attention), we had been abroad during the day and, when we got back, there was no parking near the inn. In fact, we had to park three blocks away and walk back. And here's the thing: There's no parking anywhere in Mendocino. Nor are there sidewalks. Which means there are no curbs. Which means parking "on the street" is actually only parking partially on the street and the rest in a ditch by the side of the road. It also means that you walk in the street when you walk through town... because the side of the road is taken up with cars parked in ditches. And there are no sidewalks.

That places were calling attention to the fact that they offered parking suddenly made sense. Except that none of the places in the town actually had any parking to offer. The only places that had put in parking lots were the larger hotel like places that weren't actually in the town itself.

Maybe some people consider this whole lack of sidewalks and curbs and parking "quaint" and "rustic," but I find it to be inhospitable. I really don't think it would ruin Mendocino's image for them to spend a little of their tourist money on providing sidewalks for people to walk on so they don't have to walk in the street when coming back from the coast after sunset.
But maybe I'm crazy.

Arsicault Bakery (a food review post)

On a day in the recent past, I woke up with a craving for a croissant. On the one hand, this was puzzling, because it's not a thing a frequently want or, even, think about. On the other hand, I knew exactly why I had that craving. The night prior, my wife and I had watched the first episode of Killing Eve, during which there is this whole thing over a croissant. So I woke up the next morning wanting a croissant.

As it happened, I also had to go out that morning to take my daughter to school and put gas in my wife's car, so I decided to stop and get croissants on my way home... wherein lies the problem. There are no good croissants in the area. Many many years ago, when we wanted croissants, we'd go to this place called Cafe des Croissants. At the time, we thought they were pretty great. I mean, they must have thought so, too, since they named their place after the things! They were this quaint little place that was always crowded and had all kinds of croissants, and it was always a treat to go there.

BUT! At some point within the last decade, they decided to expand. Or they got new owners who decided to expand. I'm not sure if the new owner thing happened or not, but the pattern suggests it, since they went from one location to about six within the span of a year and, of course, when they did that, the quality of their croissants went down. Way down. They're more like fluffy bread, now, than anything else. Do you have a Safeway in your area? If so, go pick up some croissants from them, and you're getting something comparable (though only about half the size of the ones from the croissant place).

Anyway, I stopped at Cafe des Croissants on my way home and picked up some croissants, and they were fine. Which is a problem when you want a croissant. You don't want a piece of bread, which is fine; you want a croissant. And, when I say they were fine, I mean they were fine with me. My wife's reaction was somewhat less than mine, which I will sum up by saying that she didn't finish hers and gave half of it to our son (who will kind of eat anything that is bread or pizza or cookies).

BUT! All of that made her want an actual, good croissant.

Because we were going down to San Francisco this past Sunday (to see an exhibit at the Legion of Honor (from which there are no pictures, because it was a no-picture-taking kind of exhibit (of all kinds of jewels and jewelry and jeweled daggers!))), anyway, my wife did some San Francisco croissant research to see if we could find some good croissants down in the city. What she found was Arsicault Bakery.

Our plan was to go by the bakery on the way to the museum, because you want croissants in the morning, right? Okay, well, I don't have any time bias against croissants, but we figured earlier was better, especially since they close at 3:00, because, apparently, other people have a time bias against croissants. It's like you can eat croissants in the morning on the way to drinking in the evening. Or something like that. But I digress...

Our plan was to get the croissants on the way to the museum, which seemed like a fine plan. Fine enough, at any rate, because we figured that even if we couldn't find parking (and you can never find street parking in San Francisco), one of us could hop out of the car and get the baked goods while the other one drove around until a pick up was needed. But that was a bad plan.

It was a bad plan because we got there and there was a line down the sidewalk to the bakery. There would be no driving around while someone hopped out and got croissants. So we looked for parking... but, as it turned out, there was a farmers' market going on a couple of blocks away, so there was absolutely no parking. Anywhere. And, maybe, the market was contributing to the line at the bakery? Or maybe not. Maybe they're always like that.

We changed our plan.
We changed it to a post-museum trip.
Which was fine except for the possibility that there wouldn't have anything left. So I wasn't surprised at 2:40 when I walked in -- alone, because there was still no parking so my wife was out driving around the block -- to find out they only had a few ham and cheese croissants left and a couple of bags of shortbread cookies. I bought a bag of the cookies and most of the croissants and dashed back out to get picked up on the drive-by.

The decision (because I was hungry) was that we would eat one of the croissants. You know, try it out. My wife only wanted some of the croissant part, so I pulled out one of the croissants in its little white bag and finally looked at what I purchased...
No, I didn't look at what I was buying when I bought it, because I was in a hurry and I already knew I was buying them. I just took the bag and paid.
...It was the most croissanting looking croissant I have ever seen. And I knew this idea of breaking off a piece of the outer layer for her was going to be a bad idea. But I reached into the bag, keeping the croissant in the bag as much as poosible, and broke off a piece of the crust... Which sent croissant flakes flying into the air as it cracked apart.

It was, by far, the best croissant I have ever tasted, and it wasn't even fresh and warm. It was amazing. And, yes, by the time we had finished it, me feeding my wife bites of the outer crust as I ate the ham-and-cheesy goodness and innards, I was completely covered in croissant flakes. There are still croissant flakes turning up in my car despite a rather thorough brushing of the seat when we got home.

As it turns out, Arsicault has won some awards for how great they are. It's understandable.
Oh, and the shortbread cookies -- and neither of us particularly care for shortbread cookies -- were also amazing. They are the only shortbread cookie I've ever had that I would put in the "good" category.

Yes, we are making plans to take a trip to the bakery when we can get there early enough to get fresh goods. I can't wait!

[The above pictured croissants are from Arsicault, but I can't take credit for it. I stole the picture from their facebook page, but I'm pretty sure they'd be okay with it. I hope. Either way, you can check them out on facebook.]