San Fran+Wine Country Vacation Planning..

[wsu12]

Hello PS Friends:
I am starting to plan a summer vacation for my husband and I. We are 100% sold on the bay area, I have not been in nearly 10 years and this will be my husband''s first time. We are thinking 3 days/2 nights in San Francisco and then another 3 days/2 nights in Napa/Sonoma.

I would like to hear thoughts on hotels, excursions (i.e. hot air ballon rides, winery tours..), restaurants.....

I know some of the best places are ''off the beaten path'' and I am hoping to find some of those.

Or, if you stayed/went some place that you hated--Please tell me about it so I don''t make the same mistake.

Thanks in advance for any help and/or suggestions!

 

[ndpwood]

I highly recommend The Carneros Inn. It is such an amazing B&B with several great restaurants and a nice little grocery on-site. Also love a casual lunch at Taylor''s Refresher - It''s a Napa classic! You should call and book some private tours at some wineries in advance too. Oh, and pick up some Olive Oil at Napa Valley Olive Oil Company. It is the best ever!!

 

[sillyberry]

I stayed at the Indian Springs Resort in Calistoga and really liked it (especially since it wasn''t crazy expensive). Great mud baths and boyfriend loved the giant mineral pool. Calistoga was very cute with a ton of restaurants. We also stayed at a B&B in Kenwood which was fine, but I discovered I''m not all that big on the forced intimacy of a B&B. They were very nice, and I wouldn''t want to say anything negative about them in public. If you''re really want to make sure you don''t end up there (and I can''t see why you would), if you google I think only one place fits that critera!

We did a Sonoma wine tour with Valley Wine Tours and it felt really personal - not just a cattle call through the biggest tasting rooms in the area. However, my favorite thing we did on our whole trip was a private tour with the 88 year old proprietor of the MacLeod Family Vineyard. We drank wine and ate brie and chocolate out at a picnic table in the middle of the vineyard. AMAZING.

In Sonoma we were really disappointed in our meal at Cafe la Haye.

Oh, and Taylor''s Automatic Refresher is delicious. Right across the street from the Inn at Southbridge, which was nice but overpriced.

 

[wsu12]

Thank you ladies...I am so excited!

 

[Mara]

We like the Napa River Inn in downtown Napa. We have stayed there 3 or 4 times. They have a bakery on site, Sweetie Pies that is to die for! Also the Fairmont in Sonoma is supposed to be great, they make their own marshmallows on premises and you can roast S''mores by the huge firepit outside.

There are a ton of good places to eat in that area. I suggest using Yelp to help narrow it down. A few of my friends just LOVE Ad Hoc restaurant in Yountville. There is also Bouchon which is famous..the bakery in Yountville as well.

Areas to check out for where to stay, wine, dine..Yountville, Sonoma, Napa...all within relatively close driving distance. Also FYI Sonoma County is huge so make sure when you are planning the activities to take driving distances into account. It can be longer than you think from point A to B. have fun!

 

[rierie26]

Calistoga is really cute. Downtown is just a couple of blocks long, lots of cute little stores along the way. If you rent a car to go there, you don''t have to drive very far to visit the different wineries as they''re right by each other. There''s also a bunch of spas that take advantage of the springs and mud.

Sonoma tends to be a little less crowded than Napa. Korbel and Kendall Jackson have their wineries there. Korbel has free tours of their winery and rose garden as well as free tastings.

If you and your husband are foodies, then you''ll love the Bay . In the city I recommend visiting the Ferry Market Building. It houses stores/stalls from a bunch of legendary food places from oysters (Hog Island -- yum!), to bread and gelato. On Saturdays they have a farmers market with live music, food, fruits and veggies. Summer is a great place to come and eat really good organic produce. It''s right on the water and walking the Embarcadero on a gorgeous sunny day is one of the best things in the world.

 

[SapphireLover]

Perfect thread!

DF and I are in the middle of planning our honeymoon for this summer and this is on our list of possible destinations. We are based in the UK so the three options we have whittled it down to are-
1. Fly to San Fran- Go to wine country- on to Yosemite, driving a cool convertible Mustang and then go to Kauaui
2. Brazil- Rio, Iguacu, Bahia beaches and maybe some ol'' Amazonian action
3. Japan- Tokyo, Kyoto, some hot thermal spring action and maybe a music festival

Thanks for all the suggestions for the USA trip!

 

[CurlySue]

A couple people have already mentioned Calistoga, and I''d have to ditto that... I loved how relaxed it was up there, and since we had a rental car, we were able to hit a lot of different spots in the area. We also found that the hotel rates were much more reasonable than places further south, closer to the town of Napa. Like sillyberry, we did mud baths at Indian Springs, and LOVED it. We tried a few different restaurants on that main strip, and both were great.

The one restaurant that I tell EVERYONE to go to is Mustards Grill, which I think is about a 20 minute drive just south of Calistoga. Simply delicious, not outrageously expensive, and a relaxed atmosphere. Definitely call way ahead for reservations if you decide to give it a try.

 

[elrohwen]

Ooo, yay, we just went there for our honeymoon!

San Fran - My only big time recommendation that you probably won't hear from others is to go to The House Restaurant on Grant Strett in Chinatown for lunch. It's more upscale than your typical dive place in the area and the food was amazing! Totally unexpected and very off the beaten path. It's more Asian fusion than Chinese and they have great apple pie for dessert (for whatever reason). Definitely recommended. It was one of the best meals we had the entire trip and that's saying a lot since we carefully choose every single restaurant we go to.

Wine Country - The best meal we had was at Redd in Yountville. Very very good. I also recommend renting a limo for a wine tour - it was really fun to have someone else take us around and he had some great coupons for free tastings. We did the tour in the Sonoma/Russian River Valley area because wineries here tend to be off the beaten path and hard to find yourself. For Napa, you can just drive up and down the main two roads, so it's not really necessary to have a tour guide. Also, if there are big name specific places you want to visit, look them up in advance because some are reservation only. Sometimes they don't care if you show up anyway (places in Sonoma tend to be like this) but some can be quite snobby (I'm thinking Cakebread here). So check just in case so you can make an appointment.

Have fun! I'm so jealous - I already told DH that I want to go back there this summer, but he said we were just there so we need to go somewhere else

eta: The Girl and the Fig in Sonoma is great. I prefer it for lunch because you can sit outside in their cute garden, have some cheese, and they have great lunch foods.

eta2: We went to Rutherford Grill for lunch and were kind of disappointed. The food was decent, but it didn't live up to the reviews I had read. Pretty average food but with a higher than average price.

 

[elrohwen]

Date: 1/11/2010 11:39:39 PM
Author: sillyberry
In Sonoma we were really disappointed in our meal at Cafe la Haye.

Really? We loved la Haye! Our meal there was great.

 

[AsscherGirl]

My hubs and I went to San Fran this past summer - we had a great time!

If you can fit it in, I''d definitely make a trip to Muir Woods. It''s right outside of the city and on the way to Napa/Sonoma and I just loved the scenery and the trees were beautiful.

We stayed at the Westin St. Francis in the new tower and it was nice and certainly in the middle of the tourist areas of the city. It was nice enough, just not super luxurious or anything and it was definitely a very crowded hotel. However, we found the staff to be very helpful and nice.

We took a shuttle bus tour to Napa and it was just ok. It would have been fun to spend a couple of days there, but I''d be careful with transportation(I imagine they are strict with drunk drivers). My favorite winery that we visited was the Black Stallion winery. The wine was good and I just really enjoyed the atmosphere. I would have liked to spend more time there, but we couldn''t since we were on the shuttle!

When you are in the city, go to XOX Truffles in the North Beach section. The truffles are AMAZING. I think about them a lot, haha. North Beach in general is a cool place to look around. Unfortunately we didn''t really get to eat there, but there seemed to be a bunch of awesome looking cafes.

We ate at Cafe Claude (union square area) and Bix and enjoyed both a lot. Don''t miss In N Out Burger (it''s in Fisherman''s Wharf). We also went to a place near the Embarcadero called Plant which was really yummy (a very hippy trendy organic type place). We also ate at Amber (an Indian place) and thought that was delicious.

We went on a San Francisco Shuttle Tour to get our bearings around the city and I''m not really sure I''d do it again. We were too rushed at each spot, but then didn''t feel motivated to go back to spots we wanted to check out more (like Golden Gate Park). We did get to go inside one of the Full House House''s (Painted Ladies) and that seriously almost made it worth it.

Oh - and we went to a SF Giants game and it was a GREAT time. We live in NJ and try to go to Yankees games and I was pleasantly surprised at how reasonable the tickets and concessions were in SF (I think only someone from NY/NJ would think that though, haha). But the stadium is beautiful, the eats were good (garlic fries!) and we had club level tickets where the bar didn''t close at the 7th inning. Also - we could walk there from our hotel - AWESOME.

Have a great time!

 

[Sundial]

My husband and I spent a few days in wine country last August. We stayed at the Vintner''s Inn in Santa Rosa which was so charming with lovely rooms. I recommend it highly. We found the wineries in Napa to be rather crowded and we far more enjoyed visiting some of the ones in the Dry Creek and Russian River Valley areas. Have fun planning!

 

[Mara]

oh Rutherford Grill is chain-owned...we eat at one of the other ones all the time locally, Los Altos Grill. I think it's owned by Houstons? Food is pretty good, but there are def much better places out there.

in SF...we did the GoCar 2 years ago with my family and it was so fun. It seems kind of silly but it's actually a great way to see the city without doing the shuttle or bus. We took one of the off-the-beaten-path tours.