Wine Country

After a very hectic and full on 2 days in San Francisco, we headed 2 blocks from our hotel to pick up the rental car for the start of our California road trip. When we got to the rental place they offered us a very sensible Jeep 4×4 or.. a Dodge Challenger. You can guess which one we ended up with!

Google suggested it was about 1.5 hours up to Napa from San Francisco and as we couldn’t check in to our hotel until 4pm, a pit stop or two en route seemed sensible.

The first stop was to grab some lunch and do a little bit of retail therapy. We headed to a retail park about an hour out of San Francisco, there we were able to pick up a Garmin charging cable that we had been unable to find in both NYC and SF but, more importantly, we could try the famous in-n-out burger. The diner looks exactly as you imagine a burger chain would look like in America, red and white decor, waiters in white uniforms with hats on – it looked like the real deal. We ordered our meals and waited expectantly for our minds to be blown and taste buds awakened. Sadly, the burger was nothing to write home about. We had ordered onion with ours, which turned out is a large slice of raw white onion in the burger – good job we are already married with that breath!

Luckily, all was not a total bust as they had a Gap Outlet and Old Navy nearby so I could soften the blow of the disappointing lunch with some new clothes! Matt was thrilled by this outcome! (Edit, Matt was not thrilled) $40 later and I had some new California clothing and we could head up to our next stop on our way to Napa. Sonoma!

Sonoma is about 25 minutes south of Napa and very picturesque. A beautiful town square surrounded by bars, shops and ice cream parlors. We strolled around and due to the California heat decided that we would benefit from an ice cream from a place called Sweet Treats.

After we were suitably full from the ice cream, we headed up to Napa – the scenery as we got close to the town was stunning. Vineyard as far as the eye can see and some quintessential red American barns. As it was a Friday night, when we arrived into Napa town centre it was buzzing with people and has such a wonderful atmosphere. Heading just past the train tracks was the driveway of the River Terrace, our hotel for the next 2 nights. We were lucky to have our room upgraded so that not only was it double the size of our previous rooms, it also backed onto the Napa River.

That evening we had a drink by the river and strolled into town for a bite to eat. We had to be up early for the Wine Train in the morning, so we had a relatively early night hoping to be in good spirits for the morning!