Sideways

After saying goodbye to good ol Sacramento, we headed off today to wine country and San Francisco. As you can see from the pictures, Napa is just gorgeous! After both calling our parents for suggestions on where to go in Napa, we ended up at a quaint and quiet winery called Stag's Leap. Probably a good thing we chose Tuesday to visit this area because I imagine it's very busy over the weekend.

We both had a tasting at Stag's Leap and sat outside enjoying the sunshine. The weather was amazing--probably in the mid-80's today. We're trying to soak it up as much as we can. We hadn't had much lunch so after our tasting, we realized we should probably eat some food before drinking any more wine. :) We had a nice lunch of salad and sandwiches at the Rutherford Grill. They also made homemade cornbread which was so yummy! Again we got to sit outside and enjoyed watching all the wine tourists make their way down the road.

Next we made our way to the Rubicon Estate which was across the street from the restaurant. The Rubicon winery is owned partly by the Coppola family...as in Francis Ford Coppola. This winery was beautiful! And inside they had old film cameras and interesting history about the Coppolas. Not a bad life--movie making, wine making, cigars, winning Oscars...the Coppola's have it made in the shade.

We found a nice wine steward at the tasting bar and got to sample 4 different wines. We tried to be all professional in our wine tasting--smelling the wine, swirling it around, swishing the wine in our mouths, tasting the hints of pomegranate or asparagus in the wine--inspired by the movie Sideways. We probably just looked like amateurs though. And would you believe it--Megan actually didn't get carded at any of these places! Either the wineries are lax or Megan is actually starting to look over 21! We paid for 4 tastings, but the wine steward let us taste 5. He was very nice. The Rubicon 2004 is their signature wine. It was very good, but unfortunately we couldn't bring any home because it was $125 a bottle! James did buy some of their Cab Sauv though so we have a souvenir now from Napa. After all these tastings, we were beginning to feel a little "Sideways" so felt it was best to start heading to San Francisco!

On our way in to the city, we stopped off the side of the road to take some pics of the Golden Gate Bridge. After almost getting blown off the cliff, we made it to the lookout spot to take some pictures. It still amazes us that humans were able to build a bridge of that size and magnitude! We meandered through the city and finally found our hotel--the Hotel Vintage Court in the Nob Hill/Union Square area. It's a great little boutique hotel. When we walked in to the lobby, it was filled with people sitting around drinking wine. We thought at first the hotel set up a great welcoming party for us! But then quickly realized it was the wine tasting hour. As if we hadn't had enough wine already, we ran our suitcases upstairs to our cute little hotel room and ran back down to enjoy some more wine. The hotel is in a great location--and it's just down the street from the trolley line so we hear the trolley bells every once in awhile from our room.

After wandering a bit last night, we ended up at a great Italian restaurant in the Union Square area called Kuleto's. We had some awesome food--calamari, steak, pasta, and yes, more wine. Gosh we're starting to sound like lushes! Topped off with some Coldstone Ice Cream--we gotta say it's been a pretty great day. Tomorrow it's some sightseeing in San Fran and then headed on down the coast to Carmel. Until then....