stripethree

It has been a fantastic first leg of my trip to the west coast. The only hiccup thus far has been US Airways somehow forgetting to pass my bag along to United in Phoenix, but luckily it was quickly found and delivered with minimal effect on or plans. While I’m visiting Olivia here, we are both working during the day, but the wonders of San Francisco started when we took off Friday for lunch, grabbed some sandwiches and walked three blocks down to Pier 39 and ate by the water. Wonderful it was, especially since I’ve lived absolutely no where that I’ve been able to do that. For the evening, we went downtown, met a handful of friends of Olivia and Jay and appropriately patronized an Irish pub for St. Pattys. We wandered around the city some as well and it is magnificent. Then back the bars, I lost count of how many we made it out too.

Saturday morning we packed up early and hit the road for Sonoma. The Golden Gate bridge is beyond impressive in person and besides being ominous, is also quite eerie when draped in fog. Everything that surrounded the drive to Sonoma was beautiful, like nothing I’d ever seen. I can see why people love this area just for the visual wonders of the landscape. Less than ninety minutes later we are cruising Sonoma Highway and pulling into the first winery on our tour. We made it to eight, yes, eight, on Saturday. All of which had multiple wines to sample and amazing food to accompany it. By no means did I know much about wine, but it didn’t matter because it wasn’t important and even just by listening I learned more than I probably ever needed to know. We even got a behind the scenes tour of one of the wineries including a vertical tasting of two of their signature wines. Yeah, I didn’t know what that was either, but basically, you sample the same wine from different years. It was a bit intimidating to be in a room with people speaking in such detail and with knowledge about wine. Wine! Everyone was friendly though, whether or not that was helped by their blood alcohol level, well, who cares. Again, the food. I can’t stop thinking about the food. Some of the vineries actually had well known catering companies providing the food, at least one of our stops was determined by my friends knowledge of how was providing the food and no so much the wine. There was everything from beef marinated and grilled like I’d never tasted to all sort of cheese samples and dishes. There was plenty of it as well and no lunch stop was necessary. We stayed at a hotel in Sonoma for the night and made friends with everyone at the bar and the staff. The place was great, with the exception of a relatively early last call. Dinner was great, even off the bar menu, and whatever delicious margarita that Christina, our bartender, was fantastic. I didn’t bother counting how many, but neither did anyone else in our party.

Today, Sunday, we got up and out again to complete our ambitious wine tour and I think we visited another 10 wineries today. The food today was even better and there was even some champagne to sample at some stop and a nice selection of Cherry and other desert wines at another. We basically made our way up and down Sonoma Highway to every location we has not visited the day prior. Once we were finished with that, we headed hack in the direction of San Francisco and stopped outside Alameda at a sushi place that is a favorite of Olivia’s. It was fantastic. I’m amazing I’m not yet passed out in a food, wine, and walking coma, and unfortunately I cannot take the pictures off my camera yet since the necessary cable didn’t make the trip.

I think enough’s enough about the food and such, if I keep talking about it I will somehow get hungry again even though it seems impossible. I would have never thought or tried such a weekend trip on my own but I’m so glad that I got the chance to do so.