Monterey Peninsula, Sonoma Valley, Pt. Reyes Nov. 11, 2005
Friday morning we left the hotel in search of a wireless hotspot and found a brew pub in the village of Napa which had one. It the pub was not open but we were able to get a connection from outside of the bar. We left Napa and drove west on Rt. 12 to the village of Sonoma. That was smaller than Napa but there were a lot of boutiques and restaurants. We had lunch in a Mexican restaurant and then drove north up the Sonoma valley. We stopped at the St. Francis Winery and tasted some of their reserve reds. We bought a bottle of a 2002 Zinfandel to bring home. The wines that we tasted are not distributed and are only available at the winery. We drove through Santa Rosa to Bodega Bay which is on the Pacific ocean. From there we drove south on Rt. 1 through the Pt. Reyes national seashore. It was cool and drizzling so we stopped only once to look at Stinson Beach. We continued south and up into the clouds to drive around to the Golden Gate Bridge to San Francisco. We parked near the California St. cable car but it appeared to be broken so we took a cab over to Chinatown. Reminiscing about when we were last there in 1993 we wondered if we could find the restaurant where we dined then. We couldn't remember the name but remembered the look and were able to find it. We had dinner at Empress of China and were very happy with the meal. It is located on the 6th floor of a building and we had a view of Coit Tower (and the bay, were it not dark). While it was raining at Pt. Reyes, San Francisco was dry. After dinner, the cable car was running so we took it back over the hill to our car. We spent the night at the Embassy Suites in Burlingame at the SFO airport then caught our flight back at 11 on Saturday. The service was much better on the flight back through Philadelphia. We agreed that it had been a very nice vacation!