This starts our second day in SF. We don’t leave until 6pm tomorrow.
So, we got up at 5:45 and walked the deck. It was a little brisk and very windy, but
nothing like the previous day at sea. We
did roughly 30+ minutes and then got ready for our trip to the wine
country. The previous evening, we put in
an order for a room service breakfast that showed up right on time at 7:30, so
we could finish getting ready and eat before leaving for our adventure.
Julie had booked us on a private group tour – Napa Valley
Wine Country Tours. She did research
using Trip Advisor and it was highly ranked.
This was the first and probably last time that she will use Trip Advisor. It was scheduled to last 8 hours and were to
be picked up in front of the Hard Rock Café on Pier 39 at 8:40. We left at 8
and made it in plenty of time.
The driver showed up on time, checked us in, and we were
told to board the bus. We got on the bus
and it was configured with the seats against the outside bus windows (with an
aisle down the middle) and you sat facing the other window. Ok, this was just the start of what was a
very, very strange day. I’m not 100%
sure how to explain it all, but I’ll give some highlights. We knew it was going to be weird when the
driver (whose name sounded like “soccer” but not spelled that way) said that we
were on a party bus to the wine country.
Out of the 27 passengers, there were five of us that were
roughly the same age. The rest, well, were
in their 20’s and 30’s and they clearly understood that this was a party bus. The plan was to visit four wineries, do
tastings in each, have lunch at winery number 3 and then return.
We knew it was strange when it started with the millennials constantly
taking selfies. Making different faces,
different poses, different people, taking the pictures and laughing. It was so different.
We stopped at a vista near the Golden Gate Bridge.
The first winery was run by the Jacuzzi family (and owned by
Cline). Yes, they were the inventors of
the Jacuzzi tub. The wines were
excellent (mostly Italian types of wines) and the building was really
cool. Including lots of artifacts of
original Jacuzzi equipment from when it was first invented. They made like 20 different kinds of wines,
mostly buying grapes from farmers around the valley.
The second winery was Nicholson Ranch Winery on 40
acres. They only grow chardonnay and
pinot noir grapes and only produced 4 wines (two types of each). They use dry farming and we learned a ton
about how they grow their grapes and make their wines. They were very good wines and it was a very
impressive operation. One problem – this
was the first place that charged a “tasting fee”. We had to pay $15 each just to get maybe an
ounce of each of the 4 wines. That being
said, their wines were also excellent and were priced at $55-60/bottle. When we were last in Napa/Sonoma area (maybe
30 years ago), they never had these fees, but apparently, this is now the norm
(they waived the fee at the Jacuzzi place). Apparently since so many tours come on a daily basis from San Francisco the wineries started charging tasting fees to defray the costs since most are not buying.
So, the party was starting as the people got more
lubricated. The driver forced it to
happen by making everyone dance down the aisle to exit the bus (starting from
the rear of the bus). What some of the
youngsters did was, uh, I don’t know how to describe it. It was crazy.
Our next winery was Madonna Winery. Another $10 fee. The best wine was their rose, and we bought a
bottle to have with lunch. The lunch was
ok (turkey sandwiches on a bun the size of Texas), and the people were getting
louder and louder.
More craziness ensued as we went to the last winery. We both were wined out and didn’t bother with
the tasting. This one had a fee of
$20. Wine was now being opened on the
bus and passed around. The music was
very loud and there was partying going on!!!!
One of the couples was from Australia, and it turns out that
he gave the driver $50 to stop at a store on the way back and get several cases
of beer for everyone. At that store,
several passengers got off and bought even more bottles of wine (approximately
10-1.5 liter bottles) and brought them onto the bus, opened them and passed
them around for all to share. The last
hour driving back to SF was chaos. We
ended up getting back on board the ship a bit before 6pm. Yes, it was an incredibly long day.
We got 6:45pm reservations at another specialty restaurant
called “Tastes.” It is up on deck 12, in
an area that used to have a swimming pool that they converted into a kind of
inside/outside eating area. It is very
informal, where they serve have a fixed menu of small plates (tapas) and you
eat family style, sampling several different kinds of foods. Before we went up to eat, we stopped by the
Galaxy Lounge where they were showing the NBA finals game 5 between Golden
State and Cleveland on three giant screen TVs.
There were maybe 50 people there watching and cheering.
At dinner, we shared a Garden Greens and Goat Cheese salad, an
Alsatian Tart, a Chimichurri Steak and Bread and Butter Wagyu Beef Sliders (sorry, no pictures of the last two).
Julie had Bananas Foster for dessert. It was all unbelievably great and we are
looking forward to eating there again in a couple days.
After dinner, we tried to watch the movie “Why Him?”, but we
were just too tired so we went back to our room and hit the sack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CM8tTG9Yig
ReplyDeleteWhat a great start! You kids be careful not to have too much fun ;)
Cheers,
Rahjur