This year for my vacation I decided to go to the beautiful Bay Area where my dear friend E resides with her husband and baby son. One of my good friends from church here in DC came with me on her first visit to California. Since we were there for only a few days, we didn't waste our time and had quite a busy tourist agenda. On our first full day there, we decided to do a short tour of the wine country, visiting the cute town of Sonoma and some wineries in Sonoma and Napa valleys. Even though we were greeted by pouring rain and couldn't figure out how to operate our GPS, we still had a great time. We first walked around Sonoma and enjoying the Cheese Factory (great cheese, wine, and souvenir shop), visiting the Sonoma museum to learn that it once used to be one of the northern-most posts of the Mexican Catholic church (and also learning that part of California used to be colonized by the Russians!). Our lunch was perhaps one of the best meals I've ever had---it was at a cute French country restaurant called "Girl in a fig" where I had the most delicious parsnip soup, salad, and out-of-this-world creme brule. Next stop was Sebastiani winery, which is right in the Sonoma downtown. Even though I had been there on my previous visit to the area, I wanted to take M there since the people are very friendly and informative. After our wine tasting, we did a tour of the cellars and learned a lot of interesting things about winemaking (including seeing the largest wine barrel made out of redwood).
We then drove through the beautiful Sonoma Valley into the town of Napa past the wine groves and green hills, and and did a wine tasting at another winery called Black Stallion, very posh and actually relatively new to the area (about 3 years old). The grounds were really pretty, with a statue of a black stallion as you enter the premises.
Even though we did end up getting lost a few times on our adventures, we made it to my friend's house for a delicious dinner and great fellowship. Then the jetlag kicked in, and we quickly fell asleep back at our hotel.
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