California!

To celebrate 11 Years of Awesome, Susan and I made the trip out west to San Francisco for a long weekend.  We started our trip in San Francisco, headed up to wine country in Sonoma County, then back to San Francisco to take in the rest of the city.

It was as awesome trip - check out the pictures but make sure you click "Read More" to see all the details of our trip!

 DAY ONE: FISHERMAN'S WHARF, ALCATRAZ

We flew out bright and early Saturday morning putting us in San Francisco at lunchtime.  We quickly made our way down to Fisherman's Wharf, where we had lunch at The Codmother. The Codmother is a food truck specializing in Fish n' Chips, who Yelp ranks as the #17 restaurant in America.  We had the fish tacos, which were superb.

After lunch, we took the ferry over to Alcatraz to tour the infamous prison grounds.  This is an outstanding tour and a MUST-SEE if you're in San Francisco.

Next, we drove north to Sonoma to settle into our cottage for the next two nights.  We had dinner at Maya, a Mexican restaurant in the town square.  The food here was good.

DAY TWO: SONOMA WINE TRAIL

After a filling breakfast at Creekside Cafe, we were picked up at our cottage by Valet Of the Moon to begin our wine tour of Sonoma.  We had a great tour which featured visits to the following wineries:

Robledo Winery
Buena Vista Winery
Benzinger Winery
B.R. Cohn

Robledo (my favorite) and Beuna Vista (Susan's favorite) were our top two.  Benzinger had a very good tour of the property.  B.R. Cohn wasn't one of our favorites.

After dinner, we took a bike ride down to Sonoma Square to eat at El Dorado.  It was a nice restaurant and rated quite well, but our advice would be to eat elsewhere.  We had steak and chicken, neither were very good.  Despite dinner, it was an unforgettable day!

DAY THREE: GOLDEN GATE AND CHINA TOWN

 We started the day with a delicious breakfast at Sunrise Cafe in Sonoma: waffles covered with assorted fresh fruits and berries and bacon!  After breakfast, we made a quick stop at the Imagery Winery - we wanted to visit but didn't make it by the day before.  After the winery we headed back south to San Francisco, stopping at Muir Woods.  Unfortunately the park was exccessively crowded and we didn't want to miss out on the other sites, so we headed on to Golden Gate Park, which was incredible.  We took 105!! pictures of the bridge, of us in front of the bridge, of Susan in front of the bridge, of Stan in front of the bridge - and none of them really captured the presence of the bridge.  It's an awesome site.

After our photo session with the bridge, we drove over to Lombard Street, a steep hill with a series of hairpin turns.  This was a neat site, but was very crowded. From there, we headed to our hotel downtown, where we parked the car before heading to China Town, via the Cable Car.

San Francisco has a few historic cable cars that still run.  Just a short walk from the hotel, we caught one of the trolleys and rode, hanging off the side, to China Town. Check out the video we took below:

After some shopping in China Town, we had dinner at R&G Lounge, which had been recommended by friends. It did not disappoint!  Prices were very reasonable and it was maybe the best food we had on the entire trip.  Except for the oysters - which I'm sure were probably fine if you like oysters.

This was a GREAT TRIP.  We love our kids but it was awesome to get some long overdue time for ourselves as well as a few meals out that didn't require a cleanup crew coming in behind us!  

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