Newport Beach

One of Dean's co-workers kindly gave us some free whale-watching tickets, so we decided to make a day of it and go to the beach this weekend. We've been meaning to go all summer, but I don't think we even went once (aside from this wedding we attended at Huntington Beach)! We're not sure how much longer we'll be in California, so we've been making a point of seeing as much of the city as we can.

Our whale-watching boat, the Ocean Explorer.

Two blue whales

In addition to whales, we also saw a whole pod (school?) of dolphins. They swam right up to the sides of the boat - they were so close, we could almost touch them!

California sea lions

Having some fun at the beach - everybody loves Goldfish!

For dinner, we headed over to Mama D's Italian Kitchen, also in Newport. We read rave reviews on Yelp about their pink sauce and the fabulous customer service, so we decided to give it a shot. We were definitely not disappointed! Their complimentary garlic bread was phenomenal, especially dipped in their drizzled olive oil with minced garlic. We also each received a free full-sized hand-made ravioli sample - it was to die for! We ended up ordering the special of the day - Seafood Ravioli with Lobster Sauce and a Fresh Capri Pasta with Buffalo Mozzarella to which we added their famous pink sauce (marinara with creamy parmesan). We were so stuffed from eating the bread that we ended up taking most of Capri pasta home with us!

Seafood Ravioli with Lobster Sauce

Fresh Capri with Pink Sauce

Both dishes were quite good, probably the best homey Italian food I've had on the West Coast. I do have to say that my all-time favorite has got to be Giacomo's Ristorante in Boston's North End, though. Their fabulous Giacomo sauce is a red lobster cream sauce, which I really think is just the best combination ever. I kept switching back between our two dishes at Mama D's, and I realized I was just trying to replicate that red lobster sauce at Giacomo's!

That being said, their hand-made ravioli was superb and is worth going back for in itself. We will definitely be adding this place to our list of must-eat restaurants in So-Cal. (Need a restaurant recommendation for the LA area? Ask me!)

So that's how we spent our Saturday! How did you spend your weekend?