{"id":48,"date":"2012-08-07T17:48:03","date_gmt":"2012-08-07T17:48:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/?p=48"},"modified":"2012-08-10T16:16:44","modified_gmt":"2012-08-10T16:16:44","slug":"our-day-in-sonoma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/2012\/08\/07\/our-day-in-sonoma\/","title":{"rendered":"Our day in Sonoma"},"content":{"rendered":"

Soft does not mean comfortable; I was up all night.\u00a0 This did however afford me hours of conversation with the owner of the B&B once I left the room.\u00a0 She was a nice enough gal.\u00a0 After a couple of hours, some of the other guests began to make their way downstairs and then breakfast was served.\u00a0 The food was good, and we had been paired-up with a couple from somewhere in North Yorkshire, England (though they had grown up and met in Newcastle).\u00a0 They were fascinating people to talk to.\u00a0 He was a paramedic on an oil rig off the coast of England, and she was a science teacher for what we would call 9th<\/sup> and 10th<\/sup> grades.\u00a0 We talked about the Olympics, the state of US and English schools, the French, football (soccer), and our two fancy cars (they had borrowed her brother\u2019s BMW Z3.\u00a0 He lives in Reno).\u00a0 None of us wanted to leave the table!\u00a0 Eventually we had to though \u2013 they had an organized wine tour today, and we wanted to hit the wine trail ourselves.\u00a0 Upon exiting, the owner of the place asked us to come back soon.\u00a0 She said that having the Porsche parked right in front really classed-up the place.<\/p>\n

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At the B&B<\/p><\/div>\n

Our first stop was to the Jacuzzi Winery; not that we wanted to drink wine at 10AM, but because there was a highly-rated olive oil place in the same building.\u00a0 We love fancy olive oils, and this place, The Olive Press, did not disappoint.\u00a0 Since we were there, I also did a wine tasting and found one wine that I absolutely adored, so I bought a bottle.\u00a0 The grounds of this winery were beautiful as well, so we lingered a while before heading back to Sonoma\u2019s downtown.<\/p>\n

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Jacuzzi Winery<\/p><\/div>\n

We found the free parking behind the Mission just fine and opted to simply keep the car there all day and walk everywhere.\u00a0 Our first stop was to the \u201cDepot Museum,\u201d a turn of the century train depot.\u00a0 It was closed on Tuesdays, so we walked around the perimeter then left.\u00a0 We took the bike path down to our next site:\u00a0 Vella Cheese.\u00a0 Of the three cheese shops in Sonoma, this was the highest rated.\u00a0 The last time we were here\u2026 about 25 years ago, we had ventured into the 3rd<\/sup> best cheese shop.\u00a0 I recalled that Barbara was really impressed with the cheese back then; me, less so.\u00a0 The Vella Cheese shop did not disappoint.\u00a0 The gal who gave us samples was wonderful.\u00a0 We were able to try as many cheeses as we would like.\u00a0 We fell in love with many but chose to buy three\u2026 later, on our way out.\u00a0 No sense in carrying cheese around all day or storing it in a hot car (even though we had the foresight to bring a cooler with ice).\u00a0 We told the gal we\u2019d be back.<\/p>\n

The bike path led us further out of the city center to the Sebastiani Winery.\u00a0 25 years ago, we had taken their tour and loved it.\u00a0 We got there at 12:10.\u00a0 Tours were at 11, 1 & 3.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t want to wait 50 minutes, so we simply shopped and hung out in their wine cellar, which was cool on this 90 degree day.\u00a0 I got both chocolate and oil samples on my shirt.\u00a0 The provided crackers had holes in them \u2013 perfect for dripping; not so much for dipping.<\/p>\n

It took a while to get back to \u201ccivilization.\u201d\u00a0 On the way, I called my service provider to get the messaging fixed on my phone, which had stopped working during our East Coast trip.\u00a0 Barb and Ray (currently vacationing with the Woos at Disney World), were having a rousing text conversation about whose daily activities were better and I wanted in on the conversation! (Since we had been at Disney World last month, they were also texting to ask me where the \u201ccool\u201d spots were, since it was over 100 degrees where they were.\u00a0 Yesterday, they were at Epcot looking for my recommended \u201cAntarctica Pavilion,\u201d which doesn\u2019t exist.\u00a0 I told them that it was at the center of the lake.\u00a0 Today, they sought the cool and comfort of Pirates of the Caribbean.)\u00a0 Anyway, we reached civilization before AT&T was able to fix my phone, but the gal was a big help and she eventually succeeded.<\/p>\n

Barb and I were now hungry, so we went to the place we couldn\u2019t get in to last night: A Taste of the Himalayas.\u00a0 The food was great, though largely Indian.\u00a0 The one authentic Himalaya dish did not impress.\u00a0 Overall, I felt it was a good value for the money.<\/p>\n

Since we were now near the Mission, and our car, we decided to stow our purchases then go see the Mission.\u00a0 This particular Mission, San Francisco Sonora, was the last of the 21 California missions to be built.\u00a0 I got the sense that the Spanish money must have been running out by this last mission because it was one of the smallest and least \u201cgrand\u201d structures that we had seen (this makes 14 of the 21 missions that Barbara and I have seen \u2013 7 to go!).\u00a0 Still, the mission was nice, and the barracks and slave quarters were larger and better preserved than other mission sites we had seen.<\/p>\n

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Mission San Francisco Sonora<\/p><\/div>\n

Kitty corner to these two buildings was the impressive General Vallejo house.\u00a0 I think it was larger than the Mission!\u00a0 These days, the general\u2019s house was a shopping center, so we shopped.\u00a0 As we strolled down the last shopping street, and past the other two cheese shops (we went into one), it was getting really hot outside.\u00a0 It was now 4PM.\u00a0 Our plan had been to shop until the Farmer\u2019s Market opened up in the park\/square at 5:30, then shop there and eat dinner there until it closed at 8PM.\u00a0 Now, we just wanted to call it a day and go home.\u00a0 We had one more stop to go: a music store that made hand-made guitars.\u00a0 When we got there, we read the sign on the door that said: \u201cback in 15 minutes.\u201d\u00a0 We just had to laugh.\u00a0 We had been thwarted so many times on this trip!\u00a0 We headed to the car and then drove to Vella Cheese.\u00a0 The gal there welcomed us back and we bought our cheese and a bottle of water for the trip home.\u00a0 We forgot to actually take our bottle of water, so the gal delivered it to us as we were pulling out of the parking lot.\u00a0 Talk about customer service!<\/p>\n

The drive home went fine until we hit that predictable slow patch in Berkeley and Oakland.\u00a0 Maybe I should have gone through San Francisco instead!\u00a0 It took us one hour to go four miles.\u00a0 Stop & go traffic is murder in a Porsche with a stick-shift, especially when behind a Prius (as we were), which seemed entirely comfortable with going 2MPH or less most of the time.\u00a0 The Porsche begins to stall at anything below 5MPH unless you ride the clutch (and why would I want to do that?), yet this Prius basically forced me to do just that.\u00a0 When I was finally able, I got around her (and behind a big pickup with no break lights.\u00a0 Hmmm, which is worse?).\u00a0 My foot was so tired by the time we got to normal highway speeds just past the stadium.\u00a0 That Porsche clutch is extremely heavy!\u00a0 Finally, we got home; happy to be in our own house and in our own bed again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soft does not mean comfortable; I was up all night.\u00a0 This did however afford me hours of conversation with the owner of the B&B once I left the room.\u00a0 She was a nice enough gal.\u00a0 After a couple of hours, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}