cmeyer54

As always, thanks to many of you who made great suggestions for our trip this past weekend. We flew into SFO, took BART to the St Francis and checked in with zero difficulty. Our room was a 'junior suite' - but was in reality smaller than rooms on upper floors without that designation. The paint was peeling, ceiling was damaged due to water but heck, we were on our way! Met up with our travelling companions, had a quick lunch at the cheesecake factory, browsed through a couple of art galleries and then went back to the hotel for a nap. Drinks at the top of the Mark followed by dinner at Aqua. I won't go into a lot of detail on the dinners since menus change often and frankly, it gets boring. Aqua was great as always and since it was my husband's 50th birthday, they had some great dessert wine with a sampling of desserts for him. Up early the next morning and drove to Calistoga for spa treatments. The guys each had a mud bath followed by massage. The gals had massages followed by facials. We had booked at Oasis Spa - don't go there!!! Very very basic - no showers for the women but you could go across the parking lot to a motel and beg to use their pool showers!! Other spas were comparable in price but had much nicer facilities. Anyway, we left there and headed to DuckHorn Winery - excellent atomsphere, tasting, really done right. Down the road to Markham which was a bit of a disappointment after Duckhorn - very little attention and we were the only ones there. Lunch at Taylors Burgers - don't miss it!! Old fashioned roadside drive up with huge sandwiches, wine (of course) and picnic tables outside. After lunch, we went to Coppola. Very lovely grounds, great exhibits (saw a real Oscar!!), great wines etc. From there, we headed to Silver Oak - again, great. Not a lot of space to taste but we knew what we were looking for and it was getting late. Back to the Lodge at Sonoma to check in. Easy, quick, concierge found us dinner reservations on Friday night with very little advance warning. Our cottage was very comfortable = recommend them highly. Dinner was at the Plaza Bistro - a bit noisy but great food. We had planned a limo tour for the next morning with California Wine Tours. Our driver was Marcus - again, he was super. We'd been to the valley before and had an idea of where we wanted to go. He augmented our list with one extra that turned out very well. First stop was Cakebread - 30 minute tour would be sufficient - we did the 90 minute tour and it got Loooong. Off to lunch at the Oakvilel grocery, then to Goosecrossing, Stags Leap, Chiminey Rock and Pine Ridge. the only place we didn't buy wine was Pine Ridge - very heavy for our tastes. We stayed on the Silverado trail as much as possible and avoided a lot of traffic. Back to the hotel and into town for a quick stroll. dinner that night was at Girl and Fig - interesting clientele - at least where they had us seated. Early breakfast at the bakery in town and back to SFO for our flight home. A quick weekend, packed full of fun stuff, laid back, great way to hit that half century mark!

razzledazzle

So glad you had fun here! Hope you will return and try Indian Springs in Calistoga. The thing about Calistoga is that not many of the "spas" are fancy-
if you are expecting Canyon Ranch
it 'taint gonna happen. The venue there
is more "1950's-taking-the-waters-at summer-camp" kinda places. We prefer it
by far as it's more down to earth
to us. But, I agree Oasis is way too basic for "the experience".
Taylor's Refresher-can't wait (we return for our spring spa get-a-way
next week!)
Did you purchase Paraduxx at Duckhorn?
Oh, I'm guessing you ate at the girl &
the fig in Sonoma? (I like ours better!)
What was so interesting about the other patrons ???????
Enjoyed your TR!
R5

cmeyer54

R5 - the only thing I really expected at Oasis was a shower after getting all kinds of lotions, etc in my hair - the swank is ok but not necessary. We got estate merlot and sauvignon blanc at Duckhorn and a couple of bottles of decoy - liked the cute name and the wine wasn't bad either. Yes, Girl and Fig was in Sononma - a noticeable dearth of men in the place while we were there....i was also a little surprised that the shops didn't stay open past 5 on Friday or Saturday night. Taylor's was awesome!!! Reminded me of the good old days and looked like they used to have car hops!

winexpert

Just a note to visitors to Napa and Sonoma. If you are so inclined to take a wine (and we have several times), don't use California Wine Tours. They hid charges (tip was included but they didn't make that clear, for example). The driver was in a rush and didn't provide one bit of information on the limousine tour.

AJPeabody

Hey there, winexpert

Don't you think posting the same thing over and over on different threads is sort of annoying. We got the idea!

cmeyer54

winexpert - we used California Wine Tours and were very happy - our driver was informative, interactive, funny and more than acommodating to our requests. No hidden charges at all. We were delighted and only wished we'd booked 6 hours instead of 5.