who needs to eat on their birthday?

Last Sunday was Micah's birthday and to celebrate I planned a trip to Alameda Island to visit St. George Spirits, a fancy pants distillery almost in our backyard. And, well, the trip did not go exactly as planned, but we still had a lot of fun and I think you could call his birthday festivities a success.

We started out the day with a trip to the gym. I know, right. The gym? We are at the beginning of our sprint triathlon training and neither of us wanted to skip the workout. Anyway, we did a short swim and a short run and then bussed it across town to catch the ferry to Alameda. The plan was to get over there and have brunch, but I had sorely miscalculated the distances to the restaurant we were going to go to and then back to the distillery. We tried to call a taxi, but that did not work. So, here we are, having each eaten a banana and an energy bar, hungry post workout, and there was no food in sight. We didn't have much of an option than to walk over to the distillery that was about 1 mile away.

Lo and behold, we get close and spot an ice cream truck. Perfect!

Chips and ice cream, that will hold you over for about 10 minutes.

The distillery has an amazing view, looking across the bay, of San Francisco.

The tour was fun and informative. Not to mention it's just pretty plain cool to see the inside of the old hangar that now houses the distillery.

Every distillery has a shark, right?

St. George Spirits got their's from a company that makes the prototypes of animatronics. This shark was the mold for the one created for the movie the Deep Blue Sea.

And then we got to the tasting. I'll admit it probably would have been a little more enjoyable had we had food before the tasting. But, we went slow, enjoying ourselves, and drank lots of water too. All the beverages we tasted we're fabulous. The two we enjoyed the most (and bought bottles of to take home) were Buddha's hand (a citrus-y infused vodka) and a coffee liqueur that uses coffee beans from local roasters (it is insanely yummy).

Afterwards, we walked the mile+ back to the ferry, made our way back to SF, and immediately bought food (real food) to eat. Hey, we got to eat an actual meal before 5pm, I'll count that as a success?

We then went home and got ready to have some friends over for cake and ice cream. I made a cake (which I maintain is an essential part of every birthday). Unfortunately my mad decorating skills could not mask the not-so-moist-cake. I blame the recipe, I shouldn't have tested out a new recipe...

Happy Birthday Micah!