San Francisco - Day 1 - Sonoma

Wednesday 10th of December
Our first full day in San Francisco. We still had our rental car and decided to make use of it until we had to return it on Thursday.

After guidance from Barry, we headed North to Sonoma, which is serious wine country. To get there, we headed over the Golden Gate bridge again, this time in daylight. A magnificent experience and driving over it you get a true appreciation of how big it actually is. From the bridge you get a good view of Alcatraz as well (nope, we never made it to Alcatraz...maybe next visit).

Approaching the Golden Gate Bridge


Going over the bridge...it's really quite big!


Alcatraz...try and get off that rock

I guess you could swim it...maybe

Once we got to the Sonoma area, we headed for the visitors centre and picked up a map showing wineries. Apparently there are 300-400 wineries in the region, with around a third of these doing tastings. We decided to head straight for the town of Sonoma and take a look around and then head out to try vino.

At the visitors centre, Sha seems to have shrunk


Sonoma country side vineyard


Sonoma town square

A lovely little town square with a little park

Sonoma is quite small population wise - there's about 10,000 people all up. It's a lovely place and very foodie/wine orientated.

We took a good look around the shops and it was here I found the slinky for Ness - the store was called Tiddle E. Winks. Actually, we liked it so much here that we ended up spending far too long in the shops and simply enjoyed walking around and getting the 'feel' of the town. This meant we didn't make it to any wineries nor did we manage to do a wine tasting in town. Oh well, what we did instead was worth it.

After checking out the shops, we went to a deli and picked up a whole lot of yummy treats. I have to say that the gourmet food that you can get in the States is amazing and it is a shame that so many Americans go for the junk food rather than the good stuff. I guess the higher price is one reason for this, but there is definitely excellent quality food about if you know where to look. For those Statesiders who eat both healthily and well, I salute you!

We ended the day with a picnic in the Sonoma town square while watching dusk approach and washed down our meal with this most amazing bottle of pear cider. This pear cider was BRILLIANT. Since tasting it, we have tried a couple of other brands in the US and London, but nothing compares to that bottle (and alas I can't remember the brand).