Day 98

So we are out in beautiful San Francisco, California. So far the trip has been pretty amazing. We arrived around 10:45 Thursday morning and checked into our hotel, got situated, and headed down to Fisherman's Wharf to walk around and have lunch. After being there 5 minutes (passing an In & Out Burger without stopping might I add), I realized that this was tourist central. Like being at Navy Pier in Chicago. Anyways we did some walking around, saw the Sea Lions that lounge on the wooden planks in the bay and make crazy noises, then headed to Pier 39 for our trip to Alcatraz. We took the boat put there and took the 35 minute self guided audio tour. It was very cool and educational. (I promised Leah that I wouldn't write how she asked me on the way out of there were still prisoners living there - she's so cute, isn't she?) We took some solid photos which I will put up on the blog when I get back tomorrow night. Anyways, since it was such a long day a this point (we had been up since 3 am PST), we headed back to our hotel room around 4 for a much needed nap. We had 7:30 dinner reservations at Rose Pistola, a trendy Italian Restaurant. I'll say this, while we did both enjoy our meals, the menu could have given us more selections. I've never been to an Italian restaurant that only had 4 pasta dishes, but so be it. It was mostly Fish and other more upscale dishes. It was all good though, we both had great salads and I buried my entire penne with veal bollagnase. We capped off the night with a 10 block walk home through the North Beach neighborhood.

Yesterday we slept in (reasonably, 7:30), had some breakfast and hit the road over the Bay Bridge to Napa. We were at the Domaine Chandon Winery by 10:45 am ready to start the tasting. We took at 30 minute guided group to which was very educational. For example, I didn't know that Champagne is only called Champagne if it is from France and everything else is considered sparkling wine. We tasted three different sparkling wines and three different reds. We next headed into Yountville for lunch at Bistro Jeanty. Again, we stepped into a restaurant that seemed over our head. Its this French cuisine. We don't know what to eat. Anyways, we ended up both having french onion soup and splitting an amazing pasta with 5 different kinds of mushrooms. After lunch was the Niebaum-Coppola tour. This was the highlight of our day. We had a private tour of all of the grounds and got the full story behind the wine. The tour was a lot more of what we were looking for. We had a private tasting in a spectacular looking cellar. This time we had four different wines and two different cheeses. I was a big fan of the Ros'e and snagged a bottle for the road. We had two more glasses of wine while in the open tasting room before heading to Robert Mondavi. At this point, we learned all we needed to learn about the wine process, so we just toured the grounds at Mondavi on our own and grabbed another couple of glasses in their tasting room. We left here with another bottle as well. Around 4:00 we headed back to SF for a little relaxation time before dinner. If you haven't been to Wine Country, Napa or Sonoma, you must go. It was such a great time and so beautiful

I'll pick up the rest of the trips activities tomorrow.

Song of the day: "I've Got It Made" by Special Ed