Day 1 - Fly to San Fran
Friday, May 11, 2012
After lots of waiting for this fantastic adventure, it finally arrived. One night in San Francisco and then 5 glorious nights in wine country. Erika we LOVE your job!
The first of our many adventures was booking our hotel at noon before our flight. Why, you ask, would we wait to book our hotel until the day we leave? Well as many might know San Fran can be an expensive place to visit. The hotel rooms for a good location were pricey. Well, thanks to a great little iPhone app called Hotel Tonight, we got a great deal on a last minute hotel called Hotel Abri San Francisco.
We landed in Oakland and made our way to the BART to head into the city, the next adventure. For some reason, there was a backup in the train schedule. We learned very quickly how much that can affect you if that is your ride to work. A fellow rider had a level ten meltdown with many expletives yelled over and over again. This quote may or may not be used many times on this great vacation.
We arrived safely about two blocks from our hotel, checked in and then started searching for our first place to eat. After deciding seafood was the way to go, trip advisor helped us find a restaurant that got great ratings and sounded delicious. But sounding delicious was as far as we got, there was a line out the door and the lady greeting us was not too friendly. Although we wanted to take her dare to sit outside, we decided to move elsewhere. We walked about 4 or 5 doors down and ran into Sodinis. Yummo! Amazing pizza, amazing salad, and an amazing waitress. Blaze definitely deserved a shout out after the crazy lady down the street. Oh and here is documentation of our first bottle of wine, with many to come!
So, we enjoyed this restaurant so much we almost didn't leave in time to make it to our next reservation. We literally ran up and down hilly streets with just enough time to change and whisper our password to get into Bourbon and Branch.
Yes, that is supposed to be a blacked out picture. No pictures or cell phones were allowed, sorry. Top secret business... Bourbon and Branch used to be a speak easy, you see, back in the days of Prohibition. It was like a time warp to the roaring 20's with only drinks on the menu. The only tip I have for you here is don't let Erika order your drink. Even if she says, "I promise I can make you like bourbon," and describes some interesting sounding drinks. Don't listen, she didn't keep that promise. Should always, always listen to Jamie!
Day 2 - Biking Around / Laying Around
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Good morning San Francisco! Why don't we go on a casual 10 mile bike ride across the Golden Gate Bridge? Ok... Thanks to Bay City Bike Tours, Joe, and Renee (who hopefully got the job that she was applying for), we sure did take a ride and learned a lot about SF too. We got lucky and had two amazing tour guides for the price of one.
Coffee and Bikes, what a life!
Getting ready to do some gangster riding (as Lani would say we do)
The ride was actually more like 11 miles (info thanks to map my run app). I kept accidentally turning it off before each nasty hilly area, so we didn't get credit for those. Needless to say, we earned every glass of wine and bite of food for that day.
View BEFORE the ride across the bridge, in the Fort Mason area
View ON the bridge
Amazing view AFTER from Sausalito. The clearest view we had of the Golden Gate Bridge all day.
We caught the 1pm ferry back to the city and rewarded ourselves with a cold one for the ride. This ride was a little more relaxing than the one across.
Again, not very good with our time, we had to dash out of the city and up to Mauritson Winery in the Dry Creek area of Sonoma. They were gracious enough to put us up in their lovely "Chateau Clay."
We did lots of lounging, eating, drinking, and being merry.
Thank you Kelly for the delicious Mediterranean fish deliciousness! And thank you, thank you to Mauritson Winery!
Day 3 - Mother's Day without Our Mothers- We are sorry, sort of...
Sunday, May 13, 2012
We started the day wine tasting and a wine making science lesson at Mauritson. This is where Kelly found out she could love a Sauvignon Blanc, at least the way they make it. And, we would also definitely recommend the Rockpile Zin. Both of them made fans out of all four of us.
"Happy Mother's Day Mom! I am sorry I am calling you from your Disneyland, if it helps I am having an amazing time! Oh, that doesn't help.... Well nobody likes 70 degree weather over 105 degree weather. Oh wait.... Anywho...Happy Mothers day!"
The rest of the day was spent lounging on their glorious property
One of us would have napped in this hammock, if we weren't all scared of spiders!
A great day in wine country and another delicious meal thanks to Erika and Jamie, steak, artichokes, and salad. Oh yea!
Did we mention thank you Mauritson Winery!
Sent from my iPad by My Vacation HD app (www.myvacationapp.com)
Location:San Francisco and Sonoma
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