Days 5 6 and 7: No convenient Wifi but plenty of pictures

Days 3 and 4 Sonoma Valley the days we had enough wine

I've been trying to think about how to write about wine tastings and keep it interesting for the readers, I don't think it's possible. So maybe I'll tell you where we went and a little bit about the atmosphere and if we liked it, loved it, or were indifferent..

On day one of Sonoma we had a really great ride from San Francisco, and got to drive over the GGB which was pretty amazing. That is a marvel. Humans, although pretty disgusting and destructive, a la Gulf coast, have accomplished so much in a short span. That bridge

is proof that we can get a crazy idea, run with it and some how make it happen. It's massive and humbling and makes me want to leave a mark some how. Naw... screw that, I'll have a glass of wine, soak in the sun and appreciate other accomplishments. Allison took some great pictures on the ride to Sonoma, you can really tell how the environment changes in such a short drive. I'm really going to miss all the different trees, plants, and flowers that grow naturally that our landscapers have to work really hard to map out back home.

We arrived in Sonoma and decided to start with some

sparkling wine at Gloria Ferrer to toast to our trip. Great stuff you can get everywhere for a good price, who doesn't like bubbles?? Check out our views!

After that we decided to get in some lunch and a tasting before we check in to The Windhaven Farm cottage. We ate at A taste of Himalaya, we had lamb momo (dumplings), a chicken curry dish and lamb tandori, all really amazing. www.Yelp.com is the best travel guide for food anyone can use, I suggest if you don't use it, you start.

We found a tasting room called Highway 12 winery. We really love all their wines, and the tasting room is right off the Sonoma Plaza. Christina was the server and after all the wines she poured us, she grabbed a travel guide and basically mapped out our entire trip for tasting in sonoma and napa.. go here go here, screw that place the dude is a cuss, go here, this place has a great feel but the wine is ok....etc. She gave us her card and told us to check out St Francis, and talk to Mike and he'll set us up with a great tasting and treat us really well.. We loved Christina!

After that we went to Gundlach Bundschu pronounced gun-lock-bun-shoe. OMG<-- I know 15 year old girl talk. This place had it all, great wine, great tasting room, excellent service and I thought this would be hard to ever compete with, try their Pinot Noir, Chardonnay... Well everything try everything each wine better than the last.. We became club members.. I had it shipped to work, don't get any funny ideas Jen!!

It was time to go check into our cottage, we pick up steak, shrimp, fresh veggies and a bottle of Merlot from highway 12 which we really liked, and decided we would hang in and enjoy the cottage, grill some food, drink some wine and sparkling wine, then enjoy the hot tub which over looks miles of vineyards and farmland. So that's exactly what we did.

The following day we hit:

Ridge vineyards - Amazing zins, loved the facility, server, views

Seghesio - Great Italian varietals, great facility, server, landscaping was stunning, very Italian feel

Simi - Good wine. A few really good ones were Pinot Gris and Zin. A little corporate and owned by a conglomerate, but worth the stop. We bought the late harvest Riesling. The service was great and they had amazing landscaping.

Stryker - We loved Stryker!! Amazing boutique winery. They had the best views and tasting room so far. The wine is very good and they've been winning some awards in the area. Definitely an up and coming winery we'll be seeing in the future. Great zin, merlot, malbec, and cab. Overall a great place!

St. Francis - My personal favorite Zin of the trip.. We really got the hookup here. Free tasting of anything we wanted, 20% off all purchases, and a really knowledgeable star server, thanks to Christina and Mike. Great atmosphere, like an old Italian monastery.

Enkidu- Small boutique 2 or 3 good wines, The pinot was really unique and special so I bought a bottle.

For dinner we had oysters at Meritage Oyster Bar and then ate at The Girl And The Fig, which was another A+++++ meal. We then headed back to the cottage to hang out in the hot tub, star gaze and unwind.

That's all the time I have for now, heading to Napa.. I feel pickled! I'll write more tomorrow, in the mean time check out the new photos.

Day 2: San Francisco super tourists

Yesterday Allison and I were super tourists, we did everything tourist, with a few additions. Although, I don't think we typically enjoy the tourist traps, yesterday was an exception.

We woke up and ate our dessert from the previous night dinner, packed our bags, and started walking. We walked about 2 miles to Golden Gate park it's 3 miles long and leads to the ocean.

We walked down haight street to get there, which was a lot of hippies and odd balls, but great people watching. The street was lined with head shops and smelled of incense. Once we reached the park, there were groups of people sitting around enjoying the day and some weed. A little surreal to see it so open and accepted. It didn't seem like problem to me, but I'll skip the politics. We walked on through the most beautiful plants and trees I've ever seen. Oh I didn't tell you where we were heading inside the park. We were on our way to The conservatory of flowers, they were having a exhibit on carnivorous plants. What a great place, it was like walking into a rainforest, skip the bugs and snakes. Really beautiful....

After that we decided to make our way to the Golden Gate bridge and grab some lunch at the Burma superstar, We had never had Burmese food, and were looking forward to a new food experience. We ate Rainbow salad, which was 4 types of noodles, and a whole bunch of ingredients, chilies, peanuts, cilantro, carrots, tamarind sauce, and more, it's been featured on the food network. Really a great dish! We also had pork belly over mustard greens.. Wow! one of the best meals of our lives.

We had to go check out the Golden Gate bridge, and were both glad we did, the setting was really great, and we got to take some good pictures. The two other tourist things we did were, Ghiradelli square and fisherman's wharf, those were both really bad tourist traps and didn't have anything to offer us. We went to wattle creek wine tasting in the square and it was putrid and over priced a bad first tasting experience here. Luckily we've had some great ones since then, but you will have to wait.

Next we wanted to go to the Rogue brewpub and have some of there beers, on the way we stopped for sushi, best sushi I've ever had, hands down. we had a spicy tuna roll, halibut, snow crab, and yellow tail belly sashimi. We arrived at The Rogue bar and had a taster, Shakespeare stout from the nitrous tap, hazelnut brown, Mocha porter, and a ipa/regular pale ale hybrid they call triple jump ale. Allison had a bloodymary, made with bacon infused vodka, the bottle was filled with bacon, it was actually amazing!

After Rogue we found a great wine bar called Dell'uva, we really loved it there, the owner was a really great guy with lots of wine knowledge and a passion for everything wine and sharing what he knows, without being snobby or pretentious, great place, the rest of the night is a blur, Allison will have to tell the rest : )..

I've uploaded the pictures from our first day of Sonoma, and will write about it at my next convenience. We're off to do some tasting in heldsberg today and Lady and the fig restaurant tonight. We miss you all and hope you all had a great mother's day.

Day one: Rough start great ending!

There is a trend starting with my travel, I'm going to call it the a slight air travel curse. I'm not alone in the this, and although I find that comforting, its a bit of a travel buzz kill.

I'm going to speed through this, because once again, I don't want to harp about the negatives. We arrived at the airport at 530 am for our 645 flight. Got a bite to eat, and chatted about how stoked we were for this trip. We boarded the flight and taxied down the run way, were prepared to take off, and stopped, weather in Chicago was a problem and we needed to wait. So long story short, by the time we got to Chicago, we missed our connection. We got rerouted to Denver and should still make it to San Francisco by 230. No problem. Oh wait. Problem. we boarded our second flight and it needed maintenance on a dinged wing.. About a 20 minute delay, and we miss our connection from den. We got off the plane in Denver and the front desk was waiting for us, They were very sorry and gave us each travel vouchers, and a flight leaving den at 230. The rest of the trip was smooth for the most part. We were exhausted when we landed in San Francisco, but the excitement was back, after 14 hours (double the est) we were here and back in vacation mode. Now to see if our luggage is here, we were scared after our experience in italy. But, all for not, they beat us here and even caught the second flight we missed...Somehow??? At any rate, we were here! (I know my grammar and spelling is atrocious, and I slip into past and present tense a lot, get over it : ) )

San Francisco is gorgeous, but I'm sure most reading know this already. Green rolling hills, and so many beautiful trees, plants, and flowers. The place we are staying is really great. It a little 3 room flat, This first picture from my first post is just below a big picture window, so we have a huge panoramic view similar. We are really happy with our pick of this rental. I haven't taken any pictures yet, but we're doing tourist stuff all day today, so I'm sure we will have plenty.

We arrived at the flat at about 7 and had a 9pm resv. we really needed to hustle, which is the last thing we wanted to do, but we sucked it up and did it, and were ready to leave by 8.. On a side note, women, well and Men, need to take a lesson from Allison. We had that rough day of travel, and she still manage to rush, get ready, and look gorgeous, all without a complaint or poor attitude, very impressive! we ordered a cab online, it even texted me with the driver information and distance he was from us, that's a great system, quick, easy, and cheap.

We arrived at Chapeau at 805 or so and had an hour to kill, so we found a wine bar near by for our first sip. It was called Q, the hostess was awesome, She welcomed us, found us a place by the bar to stand, and brought us a wine menu. This place was very cool, laid back and very busy, but that didn't stop everyone working there from having a smile on there face, and making quick conversation on their way by, nothing like New England at all. I got a glass of Flying fish Merlot and Allison a glass of Amador Zinfandel.. Allison won that one, really great Zin, mine was ok, but fine. After our drink we headed back to Chapeau for our 9 o'clock had to wait at the bar for about 10 minutes or so, no big deal. Chapeau was very nice, dim lit and very warm feeling, we saw a few plates pass by and I new we were in for a great meal. They sat us down and we had a really nice and attentive waiter. They do a lot of fixed menus and/or set price course meals, we went with the four course. Allison had, oysters on the half shell, a scallop in a dark lobster sauce, a duck dish, and a dessert which we took home. I had a multi salmon app, the scallop, a lamb dish and a dessert, we had the waiter recommend a half bottle of white and a half bottle of red for the later courses. I'm obviously not a good reviewer, but it was late and remember it all and the description is impossible. I do know, we loved every second of it, and it made the whole day of travel well worth it.

Sorry for this weak post and lack of pictures, I'll make it up later... Travel...seriously...Travel even with the poor flights, I'm still very excited to be here and hope time slows down for the next 9 days...

It's time once again for another adventure!

It's been 8 months since my last full scale vacation, and time for another adventure. This time around, Allison and I will be visiting California. This trip may be more familiar for you, and less educational than the last, but I will do my best to keep it light and entertaining, except I have a slight homework assignment for those of you who follow along. If you have visited California before, please feel free to comment, and pass along recommendations for, places to eat, things to see, etc.

We leave Fri. May 7, 2010, from Manchester, NH to San Francisco ,CA. We'll be staying there for 2 nights. This is the view from the roof of the apartment we've rented. We don't have any set plans for San Francisco, except for dinner reservations at chapeau, I recommend you take a quick peak at the menu. Besides that, I think we'll be soaking in the vacation and doing some touristy stuff. I would also like to visit with my friends Mike and Dave Lagueux who live in the area.






From San Francisco we head to Sonoma for 3 night. I think you know what we will be doing there.. You got it. Winos for life.. We are going to attempt to stick with the boutique wines, but we also want to check out Ferrari Carano, and Hess. Nothing set in stone though, we both want to wing it and keep it low stress.

Next stop is our 3 Beach/ocean front stay at the Monterey bay inn, in Monterey. There is Allison and I enjoying the rooftop ocean front hot tub.. I really would like to do some surfing while we are there, I'm sure there are plenty of places to rent boards, not sure if I'll get Al in the water though.





That leads us to Lodi, Ca for http://www.zinfest.com/. Basically when Allison and I started hang out again, we quickly realized we both really liked Red Zin. Big bold fruity reds.. We started buying up anything by http://www.lodivineyards.com/. After doing some research we found out about zinfest, and decided to plan a trip around it.... Oh yeah and it just so happens to fall on Allison's birthday, how perfect.. So we're doing the private dinner on Fri at Zinfest and Sat at the regular session.. Our friends Doug and Tris Brown, live out in Reno, and have also decided to join us.. This is going to be a great time, we're all very excited.

So that's my quick write up on our California itinerary.. I hope you follow us on this trip and look forward to some great advice and input.. Don't be jealous, just get out there and start planning your trip!