On Sunday February 11 we gathered at Blue Bottle Coffee in Palo Alto for our annual Galentine's Meet-up. Even though we had to compete with Super Bowl mania, we had a solid turn out and enjoyed each other's company thoroughly.

12 of us met in San Francisco at the Dandelion Chocolate 16th Street Factory Location for a private tour of an active bean-to-bar chocolate factory, featuring a guided walk-through of the Dandelion chocolate-making process, and plenty of samples. We learned about Dandelion's single-origin chocolate making, and its startup roots, and we snacked our way through fresh cacao pods, roasted cocoa beans, molten chocolate, chocolate bars, and hot cocoa. A delightfully tasty day!

We met up at Sweet55 in Palo Alto’s Town and Country Village shopping center for a sweet and festive Galentine's Day celebration! After perusing the gorgeous chocolates and more at Sweet55, we nestled in at Douce France across the way for a lovely afternoon of hot drinks and siblinghood.

Our Young Alums headed out to San Francisco to check out the annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival at Golden Gate Park. It was a beautiful day to picnic and relax. Elvis Costello was the highlight for our club members.

A small group visited Filoli, a gorgeous 16-acre formal gardens surrounded by a 654-acre estate in Woodside, CA. Our own Diana McDonough ‘66 acted as docent, showing us around this incredible property.

We spent a lovely afternoon wandering around the Hakone Gardens, an 18-acre traditional Japanese garden in Saratoga made up of a variety of hillside gardens, historic buildings, multi-tiered waterfalls and koi ponds, strolling gardens, unique lanterns, stonework, and more. We had the pleasure of taking part in a traditional tea ceremony.

We had a classy evening at Calave in Palo Alto on Feb 27th where the food and delicious wine pairings impressed. We sampled a lovely Italian Sangiovese and a Syrah from Oregon, and came up with some great ideas for new Palo Alto events.

On Feb. 19th, Smithies teamed up for Trivia Night as the "Wandering Menstruals" at Katie Bloom's in Campbell and killed it. Period.

We had such a fun happy hour at Stein's in Mountain View!

On February 11th, we gathered at the home of Melanie Herscher '14 for brunch.