Acme Bread Company ~ Est. 1983

Another Berkeley, CA gem is the Acme Bread Co - a nationally acclaimed artisan bread bakery. Steve Sullivan, the founder and owner, says that after all these years, the number one goal is to bake outstanding bread. Acme uses only organic flour as well as working closely with farmers - evaluating and selecting grain varieties for its flour every year. They work around the clock - 3 shifts of bakers a day - seven days a week at the Berkeley bakery to meet the high demands. At its newer and only other location, in the bakery in {San Francisco Ferry Building}, breads are baked fresh throughout the day in the hearth oven. It was 25 years ago, as a busboy at Berkeley's famous {Chez Panisse} restaurant where he worked while attending UC Berkeley, that he became interested in baking bread. Eventually after bread baking became a serious hobby, Alice Waters requested that he bake bread in the Chez Panisse kitchen. In 1983 he and his wife opened their first - now legendary - bakery.

On Monday, before heading back to San Luis Obispo from the Bay Area, I stopped at the Berkeley location to snap a few photos and pick up some fresh breads: Herb Slab for panini-making, a sourdough baguette, and a loaf of olive bread!

As promised...

Rome, Italy

Sorrento, Italy

Burano / Venice - Italy

Santorini, Greece

Dubrovnick, Croatia

Sunset while on the cruise :)

As promised, here are some more picture from my adventures in Italy and the Mediterranean this past summer. As I continue to go through my over 5,000 images - I will be sure to keep posting more.

Passport Pal

Before leaving for my trip to Europe this past summer - I did quite a bit of shopping around at different travel apparel stores. Each one I went to, had the same ugly/boring passport pouches. I saw this and wished I had thought of it myself or had seen this sooner! Great idea {BlissByHeather}.

Dinner in a Treehouse?

I first heard about the {Yellow Treehouse} restaurant a few months ago and just came across some pictures of it today and wanted to share it for those who haven't heard about it. The interesting part is that modern treehouses are not new to architects, but the designers of this project in New Zealand were able to create something that blends with its host, a redwood tree. The fungus / chrysalis-shaped building is a restaurant build by, of all people, the New Zealand Yellow Pages. It is situated 30 feet up a giant redwood tree, just north of Auckland.

Adventures in Italy

Here is a very small taste of my summer adventure in Italy - a graduation gift from my
wonderful aunt! We traveled together all over Italy, then headed off to Barcelona, Spain where we embarked on a 12-day cruise of the Mediterranean (more pics of that to come - didn't want to overload the page at on time!) All these long days at work made really miss being free to travel, so I thought I would share...and speaking of long days at work - why don't we take
hours off from work mid-day for a siesta???