Monday 26 September 2011
We popped down the road to the Blue Mermaid to have a in and out brekky if they can do it, before we are picked up in 30 minutes for our tour from Extranomical – Redwoods and Sonoma tour .
Our tour guide, Rick was fantastic, though the strong Italian accent at the start of the tour had me wondering how much local knowledge he would have. He didn’t fail to impress with his knowledge, humour and attention to detail throughout the whole day.
We headed across the Golden Gate bridge and into the not so great vision. Again…
We traveled to the Muir woods and we had a 1.5 hours to wander around.
Arriving at the entrance to the woods
Shots of the woods and some wooden folk
We then headed off to the Sonoma wine region.
Climbing out of the woods enroute to Sonoma
We visited the Jacuzzi Winery for our first tasting. We tasted 6 wines as well as a dessert wine served in a chocolate shot container, then you eat after sipping a little of the wine. Fred our host taught us (well me) about the dominant nostril, and the right way to sniff wine. We left with 2 bottles of wine and some olive tapenade.
Entering the Sonoma region
Jacuzzi Winery and our bus
Fred our host
We had lunch at Sonoma square, and had a stroll around. It was a very nice area, and we could see it would be a lovely weekend escape for the SF locals.
We headed off to another winery, which was a little lame for the amount of time we had allocated but we still tasted, bought a bottle of Rose, and waited for the bus for 40 minutes.
Rose purchased
We then headed back towards San Francisco via Saussilto. The weather was finally nice around the bridge area so we stopped for impromptu Golden Gate pics, which was awesome due to our bad luck with the visibility to date.
Finally saw the bridge without cloud / fog
We chilled out for a bit and them we headed out for some Italian and a stroll around the fisherman’s wharf area.
Mixed Tape 