San Anselmo - Mask, Shop, Eat
The days are getting shorter, and that means we have to make up our minds and make them up quick when deciding how we want to spend our day off. We’re in the mood for a drive but we don’t want to go too far. We want to roll the windows down, feel the cool breeze and play our weekend playlist that we rarely get to blast in the car. We want a light lunch to enjoy outside while the weather still allows and to leisurely stroll and shop the windows of stores and boutiques that offer treasures we won’t find in our usual shopping malls and farmer’s markets. So, where do we go that has all of this? We’re going to San Anselmo.
San Anselmo is a quaint town that rests right next Fairfax and about twenty minutes from San Francisco. Located in Marin County, it's a town that welcomes and embraces you when you’re there. Whereas we would love to live there, we don’t unfortunately, but the residents are so kind you feel like you’re coming home after a long winter away. Pulling into the main drag, you see lots of diversity, children playing in the park with dogs, couples strolling casually hand in hand and neighbors greeting each other at their favorite cafe. We stop at Marin Coffee Roasters Cafe and order two large housemade lemonades and two cappuccinos as we settle into outdoor seating to decide on what to eat. A BLT and fries and a mixed green salad with a fruit cup for our table is plenty enough and we enjoy our meal leisurely while people watching and completing some work-from-home tasks on our laptops.
Enough of work, we want to get up and get out on the street before the shops close. Generally most of the stores close at 6 pm but the restaurants offering dine-in and takeout stayed open later. We spot a bookstore with old-world charm and we go inside hoping to find some new material to read in the very limited spare time we have. Nonetheless we are hopeful and the helpful employee guides us to find not one but three books we’ve had on our list for a while now: A Gentleman in Moscow, Conversations with Friends and Leonard Cohen’s Book of Mercy. After perusing the outdoor sale shelf and seeing little children beg their mother for a new bedtime story, we’re back on the sidewalk ready to window shop. We stumble into Curate Studio, a store filled with scented candles, housewares and homemade pillows. Curate Studio is probably the most modern boutique on the block and whereas it's more modern it still has that welcoming attitude that beckons us to stay and look around.
We picked up a few tin candles, large matches and some homemade lavender and absinthe soaps that we can’t wait to display in our bathroom because they are just that pretty. The scent alone of the soaps can fill the room with such a sweet smelling aroma that we don’t even want to use them for washing. We chat with the woman who works at the shop and she points out some throw pillows with Klimt and Monet paintings embroidered onto the front and says that her parents are artists themselves and these are their pillows. It's simple conversations like these that you will only find in a small town and it only makes our visit to San Anselmo that much more memorable and special.
Walking back to the cafe for another cappuccino before we hit the road is a must. We’ve scratched the itch of wanting to go for a mini road trip and we got so much more out of it than we bargained for. Leave it to a small town to take you out of reality for a bit and transport you for a few hours to a stress free environment where we can eat, find books and handcrafted soaps. Now, if only we could find the time to use the soaps and read the books, then we would really be happy! Until then, it's back to work and hopefully next weekend, it's back to San Anselmo.
xo
SS
Photography: Kailyn Chadwick
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