Napa/Sonoma - Late August-- HELP!!!
 

Hello,<BR>I've been putting a lot of time into this itinerary.. but I know that you all will have an opinion! Any advice is apprciated! <BR>Thurs-Monday itinerary<BR>the first two nights we are staying at the four points shearton 15 miles south of napa--- i had 2 free hotel nights and even though i dont want to stay there-- it's free!<BR>Thursday- fly in from Minneapolis. Arrive at SFO around 11am, rent car, drive up to Napa. I don't want to plan anything specific for this day b/c i don't know how tired we'll be. I was thinking of sticking to lower Napa and going to Mondavi, Cakebread and then going to Mustards or the Rutherford Grille for dinner. Do I need to make a reservation?<BR>Friday- wake up early. Breakfast at the Model Bakery in St Helena.. anyone been there? Winery tour of Chateau Montelena at 9:30am. pick up lunch from tra vigne's market and have a picnic somewhere.. any suggestions???<BR>afternoon-- another napa winery.. any suggestions? <BR>dinner reservation at Bouchon.. Anyone been there?<BR>Saturday- <BR>Check into Cottage Grove Inn in Calistoga.. worth the price? spending 2 nights here.<BR>Sat and Sunday-- doing Sonoma..<BR>Sat night we have a reservation for a winemaker's dinner at Kunde winery in their caves... should be neat! But, expensive! it's $160.00 a person! wow! this may be the only time I do this in my life for that price! <BR>and sunday night we have reservations at Terra.. anyone been there?<BR>sat and sunday- we want to focus on sonoma.. saturday we have a tour reserved at Vincent Arroyo winery.. very small, but heard it is EXCELLENT! other than that, we want to go to ferrari- carrano... <BR>but, i want to make sure we are not driving around too much. any help on sonoma wineries is appreciated! <BR>we've been to napa, so are familiar with those, but sonoma is a bit of a mystery to us!<BR>monday- fly out of SFO at 2pm.. we hope to drive along the ocean on the way back to the airport and make a stop in the muir woods and Tiburon if possible. so, we'll be leaving calistoga early!<BR><BR>here's my last question-- rental cars. we want a nice one, but the only place we've found is specialtyrentals.com out of san francisco. can anyone recommend another car rental place that we could rent something like a Saab convertalbe? <BR><BR>Thanks for any advice! We are excited for our trip!

Aimee, you ask too many questions.

at least I'm not a rude person. get off this board.

Try listing your questions seperately. It is a very hard post to read with so many questions.

Buy a good tour book for Napa and Sonoma. Make reservations anywhere that will take them ASAP.

Use the search function on this board and you will find a wealth of info about places to eat.

Thumbs up from us on Cakebread (great Chard), Rutherford Grille, and Bouchon's-especially the Oyster Bar.<BR><BR>Coppola-Niebaum Vineyard is touristy but still nice.<BR>As mentioned above, try the "text search" mode as there is a lot of info on Sonoma/Napa.<BR>Good luck,<BR>Kal

Aimee,<BR> I'm confused. Calistoga in way north in Napa. You are staying there Sat- Sun , but doing Sonoma those days? You're going to be driving an extra 2 hours! And why? And Terra is WAY down in the city of Sonoma! I think you'd better get a map online and redo your itin. Start with lower Napa- I suggest the Cakebread tour. It's free, and so is the tasting w/the tour. You might want to lunch a V. Sattui- great food, nice picnic grounds. <BR> If you stay at Cottage Grove,which we loved, it is close to Chateau Montelana and is a beautiful drive over to Sonoma. However, you'll have all that driving back and forth! I suggest going through north Napa your last day, do tasting and tour grounds at Chateau Mont., then mosey over to Geyserville area and do Ferrari and maybe do a lunch at Lake Sonoma or the winery there on the deck. Then, find a place either in Healdsburg (great town) or Sonoma for your Sonoma days. Personally, since you've been to Napa before, I would schedule more time for Sonoma. It is quieter, quaint, drive/scenery is lovely.If you want my trip report, e-mail me at [email protected]

I notice you are staying in Calistoga and plan to tour Sonoma during those days. It is a bit of a haul from Calistoga, which is in northern Napa valley, to Sonoma-town, and there's a ridge between Calistoga and northern Sonoma valley. Get yourselves a good map and try and plot it out. Remember some of these are two lane roads winding through hills and valleys, and on the weekends you will encounter lots of tourist traffic.<BR><BR>Hertz rents specialty cars as well. I know they have Volvos and Jaguars, may have Saabs too.<BR><BR>Sounds like you've done a lot of research already. Might try searches here on Mustards, Cottage Grove, Kunde, etc. As far as picnic spots, they are plentiful. Most wineries have good areas for having a picnic.<BR><BR>Try not to schedule every minute of your trip. Allow yourselves some time to pull over at a winery that catches your interest, or a fruit and veggie stand for snacks, etc. Enjoy!

Small correction to the previous post: Terra is in St. Helena. BTW it is a wonderful restaurant.

Aimee,<BR><BR>I'll be posting my trip report on wine country in the next few days(If I can still remember it all!), but I just wanted to say that Vincent Arroyo is terrific. it was one of our better stops. He is the nicest man... and the wine is great. Try the Merlot. We bought a few bottles and now I'm thinking about calling him for some futures. We had a picnic at his place and he poured us each a full glass of wine to have with lunch. Not too far from there is a winery called Storybook, also by appt. only. Delicious Zins and nice people. They do the tasting in a cave, so it's nice and cool there. Scenic, hillside vineyard. <BR><BR>deb