For a five day trip, the girls and I managed to see and do a lot.
We flew into SFO on July 4th, picked up a car and took off for Sonoma. As I mentioned yesterday, Healdsburg is charming. There's a lovely town square surrounded by shops, hotels and restaurants. We stayed at Hotel Healdsburg. It was a beautiful place that I thoroughly enjoyed. The pool was definitely a highlight on the 4th because CA was having an unprecedented heat wave. It was 95 (uf). Thankfully, the weather cleared the next day and we enjoyed the best weather. Sunshine and temps in the 70's and 80's for the rest of the trip. It was heaven after weeks of rain and muggy DC weather. We visited 5 or 6 vineyards and our favorite was Skipstone. We dined at Bistro Ralph, Campo Fina and Chalk Board. One thing I love about the CA dining scene: it's delicious and reasonably priced. We didn't have a bad meal and nothing was over $100.
San Francisco
On Saturday, we headed back to the city. We stayed at Hotel Vitale in the Embarcadero. It's two blocks from Ferry Plaza, one of my favorite places in San Francisco. Yes. it's touristy. However, I enjoy the wide variety of speciality food shops, stores and food trucks. My two favorite places at Ferry Plaza were the Roli Roti truck (do not miss their Porchetta sandwich and get there early! they sell out..i found out the hard way and was sooo disappointed) and Il Cane Rosso. We had dinner at Perbacco that evening. It was phenomenal.
On Sunday, I caught up with my best friend from high school who met me in the Mission. We had brunch at Craftsman and Wolves (so yummy) then wandered around the neighborhood. The Mission has lots of fun stores. My favorites were Paxton's Gate and Aldea Home. Paxton's Gate is full of the weird and wonderful. Lots of taxidermy. I wanted everything in Aldea Home. They had loads of cool table wear and furniture. After brunch, the girls and I took the ferry to Sausalito. We spent the afternoon on the patio at Bar Bocce gazing at the water. Then we had dinner at Sushi Ran which was another amazing dining experience.
It was crazy couple of days but it was so much fun!
