San Francisco Trip- Wine Country! :)

 We arrived in San Francisco on Sunday afternoon, toured Alcatraz Monday night, and headed to wine country on Tuesday. :)

We knew we wanted to take a little day trip up to wine country, but uh.. that's about all we knew. For two planner-type people, we really hadn't made any sort of plan at all for wine country.. It ended up working out pretty darn well b/c we had a great, non-scheduled, non-pressured time... :) 

Made our first stop at Rodney Strong in Sonoma. The weather was beautiful and we were ready for some vino and vineyarding. 

At our fabulous tasting (my first tasting ever!) at Rodney Strong, an employee in the tasting room asked us what our plans were for the rest of the day. Having no "plans" per se, he pulled out a map and highlighted some of his favorites. He even recommended restaurants along the way. I'd go back to Rodney Strong again and again thanks to that guy! (And I like their wine, so that helps). ;)

We decided to head north to Healdsburg and Geyserville.

First stop= Catelli's Italian Restaurant in Geyserville! We'd both been drooling thinking about their lasagna ever since our friend at Rodney Strong mentioned it.

 We weren't disappointed. :) Adorable place with fantastic food! The restaurant originally opened its doors in 1936 and has generations of family recipes on the menu. Highly recommend if you're headed to that area.

 On the way to lunch, I'd called another winery our friend had highly recommended in Healdsburg, Michel-Schlumberger. They typically offer a tour at 2pm, so we opted to head there right after lunch for the tour!

The architecture is very Mediterranean. I loved it!

Headed off for the tour with our guide (in pink) and her furry friend, Lollipop. :) Lollipop happily walked along with us on our entire tour... adorable. :) She was a rescue pup who had a hard start to life, but now lives her days surveying the vineyard and stealing apples from the orchard. :)

 Our guide told us all about which grapes were used for which wines and encouraged us to pick some and try them. Don't have to tell us twice...

 Couldn't ask for a better backdrop...

 The tour headed inside for a look at where the wine is processed and stored..

 ....and ended with a tasting in their gorgeous courtyard...

 Michel-Schlumberger was my favorite by far. I am so glad we went and made it in time for the tour. We both left with bottles of wine, unsure how the hell we were going to get them home.. but we didn't care. :) (Wineries can't ship to Oklahoma b/c we have super cool laws. *eye roll* Did you know we also can't get wine at the grocery stores here? Or on Sundays? Blerg. Anyway....)

Just down the road was a winery another friend recommended, Truett Hurst. Experts at wine tasting by now (haha), we grabbed some snacks and a tasting and headed out to the back porch to enjoy wine, weather and snacks. :) Everywhere is so fantastically casual; they just let you go wherever you want with your tastings. When guests are done with one, they just go back to the tasting room for another... :)

This is his wine tasting face.. or something... I dunno.

 The gardens behind me were gorgeous buuuut, like all of wine country, were infested with bees! Yikes! This girl is uber allergic to those pollinating creatures, so no gardens for me...

 Really wanted a photo with one of these signs. Many thanks to Eric for darting across traffic to oblige...

So glad we made the trip up to wine country. Definitely want to go back and stay up there for a few days next time. :)

Crazy to see the fog rolling in the closer we got to San Fran!

That morning, we'd checked out of our hotel in Union Square because we finished up our trip in Sausalito! We checked in to the beautiful Casa Madrona in Sausalito and were greeted with an amazing view of the bay from our room (below). Eric gets all the credit for finding this fabulous place. Perfect way to finish a very hustle and bustle trip. :)

More from our last couple days next time.... :)