Come Enjoy California With A Coastal Wine Package At Cambria’s Blue Dolphin Inn and the Wine Wrangler!

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Erin

Come Enjoy California With A Coastal Wine Package At Cambria’s Blue Dolphin Inn and the Wine Wrangler!

By Erin

Disclosure: I was invited out to come stay at the Blue Dolphin in and go on a Wine Wrangler experience for purposes of this review. All thoughts and opinions remain my own and I have always had a love for the Central Coast in California! =)

One of my most favorite places to travel to in California is to the Central Coast, and Cambria is one of the things to love about the Central Coast. Cambria, CA is a quaint little beach town along the Central Coast where The Blue Dolphin Inn is located. Cambria is just 28 miles from Paso Robles, one of California’s most popular wine regions with more than 250 bonded wineries. The Blue Dolphin Inn has partnered up with The Wine Wrangler and is now offering a new “Coastal Wine Package” for those who want to enjoy crush season and some much needed coastal R&R!

The perfect travel destination for a romantic weekend with someone special, a girls getaway weekend, or a fabulous stopover point on a drive up or down the California coast, the Blue Dolphin Inn features the most luxurious accommodations that you will find on Moonstone Beach.

Come to the Taste of Huntington Beach to Support the Huntington Beach Children’s Library!

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Erin

Come to the Taste of Huntington Beach to Support the

Huntington Beach Children’s Library!

By Erin

The 2013 Taste of Huntington Beach – 28 April

Proceeds to benefit Huntington Beach Children’s Library

Who doesn’t love great food, great wine, and even better company? This is what you will find at the Taste of Huntington Beach THIS Sunday! The best part is that it’s all for a very wonderful cause, to benefit the Huntington Beach Children’s Library! As a child I was lucky enough to always have a new book to read, whether it was one from the book store or our local library, you can bet I had an ample supply of books to read! I was (and am) still such a bookworm. As if you need proof of that, here’s just a small part of my personal library. Actually this is my “Children’s” section of books for my classroom library when I’ve had my own classroom teaching. Every child deserves to have an awesome selection of books to choose from, so anything that supports this has my seal of approval! You all already know that I love food and wine so this event is right up my alley! 😉

The Taste of Huntington Beach is a one-price, all-inclusive event where there is a unique sampling of food and beverages from 50 of the finest restaurants Huntington Beach has to offer, paired up with more than 40 of California’s premium wineries and craft breweries – all in the name of charity. The Taste is happening this Sunday, April 28 from 12 to 4 PM. If you go as a VIP, there is a special VIP reception from 11am-12pm. Just look for the big white tent at the Huntington Beach Sports Complex, 18100 Goldenwest — conveniently located across from the parking lot at the Huntington Beach Central Library.

Ticket prices will be $65 general admission with unlimited food, wine, and beer samples, as well as live music. VIP tickets are $85. For more ticket information you can check that out here: Ticket Prices and Information. You can also check out the listing of all restaurants participating in this years Taste of Huntington Beach click here: Participating Restaurants. The list of Wineries & Breweries can be found here: Participating Wineries & Breweries Will some of your favorites be there?

Featured entertainment includes Orange County’s own Tijuana Dogs, a raffle and silent auction with all sorts of cool goodies and services from local Southern California businesses (even some Disneyland Tickets are in the mix!). Join your friends and family at the Taste and you can even meet Surfing Legends Lisa Anderson, Bud Llamas, and Surf Music Legend Dean Torrence!

For more information and to purchase tickets online make sure to visit the Taste of Huntington Beach at Taste of HB or you can buy tickets at the Huntington Beach Central Library, The Longboard Restaurant and Pub, or the Lazy Dog Cafe.

If you decide to go last-minute, then you can also buy tickets the day of the event at the Taste’s main gate starting at 10:30AM

All proceeds from the Taste go to benefit the Friends of the Children’s Library where their mission is to help and support the Children’s Department of the Huntington Beach Public Library. Ever since 2002 the Friend’s of the Children’s Library, in partnership with the Huntington Beach Restaurant Association, has donated Taste proceeds of more than $360,000 to the Huntington Beach Children’s Library!

Will YOU be there this weekend? What are you most looking forward to about the Taste of Huntington Beach? The food? The WINE? The great cause it’s supporting? Hope you will join in on the fun if you will be local this weekend! <3

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. I will be given media passes to cover this fabulous event for Horsing Around In LA. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The Adventures of Planning a Wine Tasting Trip!

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Erin

The Adventures of Planning a Wine Tasting Trip!

By Erin

Wine anyone? 😉

How about a quick get away to wine country with about 25 of your closest girlfriends?

Then join me on the adventures of planning a wine tasting trip!

1. If an offer looks *TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE* It probably is.

I found an offer on one of those discount type sites (think Groupon/LivingSocial). Once it was purchased I quickly called up the company to make our reservation, done and done! Then it was off to decide which wineries we wanted to go to, so I could call this company back and give them our desired itinerary for the day we had chosen to go on.

THAT’S when I started to see all these red flags go off in my head about this limo company…

2. DO YOUR RESEARCH

I found this wonderful and informative website called the Temecula Valley Wine Country (Temecula is in Southern California, google for the website, I had to remove the link for the time being here as they were having issues with their website), which has a list of all the fabulous wineries in the area, their websites, and all the information you could ever need about them when planning a trip! On that site there is also a tab titled “Plan Your Trip” and has a listing of Transportation Partners in their Responsible Partnership Program. Registration is recommended for ALL transportation companies. Reservations are highly recommended for all transportation companies prior to bringing any guests to any of the wineries in the Temecula Valley. Needless to say, I did NOT see this company listed as an approved company on their very LONG list of transportation companies that had been approved. They did have a registration form that could be filled out and the company in question could easily register…. that is if they were a legit company running business legally…

Upon further investigation I found ANOTHER important website that you will want to BOOKMARK and save for future reference in case you ever want to rent a limo, party bus, or any other form of transportation (or for a Moving Company as well!) I found the California Public Utilities Commission page. You can look up a company in California and find out what their TCP# (Carrier ID) is, and what their status is! Turns out the company in question had their Carrier Permit REVOKED back in April of 2010…. which would explain WHY it wasn’t listed on any of their other websites. Not only that, but when I asked the company what their TCP# was, they had given me a DIFFERENT companies TCP# which was valid, but was a totally different company.

Needles to say, I canceled our reservation ASAP and quickly got a FULL REFUND from this discount website.

3. Ask around for references from people you know and trust.

Back to the drawing board for a company to work with that was legit. It didn’t take long for me to figure something out. Earlier that year my mother had gone on a limo trip with some friends up to Hollywood as someone’s son had a limo company in Long Beach so they had gotten a SUPER deal on a limo. I found out the needed contact info for this wonderful company, which you can find here at Limo 4 Me. If you click on that link and scroll to the bottom of that page, you can check out the party bus we traveled on, which is called Pirates of the Carribean! All of their info checked out and were a complete joy to work with! I hope to be able to plan another fun trip with them soon!

4. Make RESERVATIONS at the wineries! If you come in a limo or Party Bus, you WILL need one!

Okay, so now we are really ready to ROCK N’ ROLL! I found a couple of wineries we could make reservations for our group that did not require a deposit on the wine tasting (since I could not afford to put a deposit down or pay in full for 25 GIRLS up front for wine tasting), I was already taking a risk by putting a down payment on our party bus, not knowing if I’d be able to have 25 girls willing to pay for the Party Bus. Which, without a doubt this will be the MOST stressful part of planning your Wine Tasting Trip by far. Collecting the funds from your friends that are going on this trip with you as some will be more timely than others. Or you just might not end up having enough people wanting to go, then you’ll end up having to pay more than your fair share for the limo. Luckily the later part did not happen to us. We had enough girls going, it was just a matter of rounding up the funds from everyone. Which isn’t something I exactly enjoy doing.

This was in September and our Wine Tasting Adventure was set for Saturday, November 5th, 2011. I had plenty of time to gather up all my wine loving friends and some of their friends.

Being the extremely detail oriented person I am, went so far as to plan a nice breakfast for our group so that everyone could mingle and enjoy some food and drinks before while we waited for everyone to arrive and for our party bus to get here. Our bus was leaving at 9:30am sharp, so I also wanted to make sure everyone had something in their stomachs before we started drinking any wine around 11am! 😉

Horsing Around In LA

Category Archives: Wine

Come Enjoy California With A Coastal Wine Package At Cambria’s Blue Dolphin Inn and the Wine Wrangler!