I admit that I had not planned on food being one of my top priorities. After all, California is a part of North America, and North American cuisine isn't something I'd travel across the continent just to sample. But my, did we have some good meals! I would say that the Monterey restaurant Borough chose was the best all-round place in terms of food and ambiance. The appetizers were beautiful and tasty, especially Evilo's handrolls and the artichoke appetizer I shared with Ron the Happy Bishop. What possessed me to share such a precious delicacy?! The restaurant also featured crayons and brown-paper "tablecloth," which of course lead to much random doodling and general hilarity: "Don't draw a fake crayon plate around the bread! You might get crayon on it!"

But the crowning moment of the evening occurred as the meal was drawing to a close. Ron the Happy Bishop was enjoying his latte, as usual. He was fiddling with a crayon and he was making a point about something, so all eyes were on him. "Blah blah blah ��fiddles with crayon�� some sort of important point blah bla--" *sploink!* ��crayon falls neatly into latte�� ��horrified look on Ron the Happy Bishop's face�� I nearly killed myself laughing! Poor Ron the Happy Bishop - he was really looking forward to enjoying that latte.

There were so many other enjoyable meals. In Santa Barbara, we settled on a mostly-empty restaurant after much walking about and indecision. I'm glad we went there because the lamb pasta was delicious. At Fisherman's Wharf, we had seafood - even Rob the Travel Nazi had some fish in spite his general dislike of food from the sea. Borough, however, did not choose to build character with seafood, and had chicken instead. Weak, Borough, weak. Eyebrows and Evilo meticulously enjoyed every morsel of their crab and I had a fancy Caesar salad that was so fancy I got to combine it into a salad myself. In St. Helena, after a day of shopping and sightseeing, a hearty meal of wine, pizza and sundaes really hit the spot even though my sundae wasn't as large as GEORGE's AND it had a hair in it.

The hair notwithstanding, we had very few bad experiences with food. Sure, there were the fruit "smoothies" in San Francisco that were suspiciously gritty, the only bar in Carmel open past 10:00 pm couldn't make a proper martini, and Team Guy was discomfited by the general lack of butter ("What's with this oil and vinegar business? Waiter! Bring me some BUTTAH!"). I also didn't get a chance to try Jamba Juice. But aside from these minor hiccups, I would say we were gastronomically successful. We went to IHOP. We sampled and rated cheesecakes from The Cheesecake Factory (sadly, none of them were fanTAStic enough to score an 11 on the 1-10 scale). Eyebrows had a memorable custard pastry from Rulli's on Union Square. Fluid-wise, Rob the Travel Nazi and Borough had a lot of beer, Ron the Happy Bishop enjoyed a good many cups of crayon-free coffee, Evilo managed to get drunk from the wine tasting and GEORGE enjoyed the (very) warm feeling of scotch for the first time. Eyebrows and I even indulged in one of our favorite pastimes of foraging for food at the Pier I Ferry Building Farmer's Market in San Francisco. Figs, heirloom tomatoes, cheese and bread...we did some good foraging work, Eyebrows! High five!

And at some point during the trip, I discovered that there is a reason women on television shows always seem to close their eyes while enjoying a luscious forkful of dessert or a well-deserved sip of coffee. As cheesy as this may sound, it really does taste better when you shut everything out and concentrate solely on what you're eating. So I started closing my eyes to savor my food, and so should you!