Life, The Universe & Everything

Ok, finally some much promised photos. Here are a few snaps of IC.

a.k.a Wine Country. This was something I planned and wanted to do, so even after my plans got mucked around I managed to reschedule it – the full day wine tour on Friday. I got a late text on Thursday saying I would be picked up between 8.00 and 8.15, it turned out to be 8.20 but that was fine.

It turned out to be a relatively small tour – Jim our tour guide and 8 in the group. We came from New Jersey, Colombia, Austria, Canada and of course Australia so it was a good mix. The Austrian couple were quiet and didn’t speak much English but the rest of us got on really well. Jim was interesting and informative – a good tour guide. First stop was the viewing area once we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge. Unfortunately, the fog persisted. I knew the bridge was there, because we had just driven over it, but you couldn’t see it at all. I have some great photos of fog, but I’m still waiting on a chance to get a photo of the bridge where you can actually see it!

Following that, our first stop was Ru Vango

Writing this with the benefit of hindsight, this would be my second favourite of the three we visited. It was definitely the most beautiful, so most of my photos are of the vines there. A couple of general observations, at least from the wineries that we visited. They don’t seem to have very many vines, indeed they all produce small amounts of wine. Two of them don’t distribute their wine, they only sell it at the cellar. There was a Rose at every winery and only one winery had whites on their standard tasting. This definitely was the most pretty winery, so when I finally do a photo dump or three you’ll be able to see.

The next stop was lunch. We went to Oxbow Public Market which has a great range of food and wine. There were a lot of options but in then end Heather (the Canadian) and I ended up sharing a delicious pizza. Given that there were more wine tastings to come we went with sparkling water to drink!

After that we headed off to our next stop – Peter Cellars.

This would have been my least favourite winery for a couple of reasons. Firstly the guy who was running the tasting just didn’t seem super friendly. I got the vibe that he didn’t really want to be there and he wasn’t very knowledgeable about the whole business. It might have partly been because there was another group there at the same time so he was running back and forth between us. I also didn’t enjoy these wines as much as the previous stop. There was only one I really enjoyed. A rich red pinot and I enjoyed it enough that I was going to buy a bottle. However when I saw that the price was of US$50 a bottle I decided it wasn’t that good.

The final stop, and my favourite was Homewood Winery.

This was the polar opposite of the last one. I enjoyed all of the wines to varying degrees. But by far the best part was the guy who ran the tasting. He was personable, friendly and incredibly knowledgeable, so much so that I tipped him for running such a great tasting. He knew what he was talking about, answered questions, involved everyone, told us things we wanted to know about the wine and even joined us in tasting a couple of the wines. In the end I got a bottle of the flying wizzbangers which was not your standard red but it was very nice, and easy to drink. I also got a bottle of zinfandel port which wasn’t on the tasting list but was a nice surprise. It’s delicious and if you know me you know I love port, so I had to have a bottle of that.

Overall it was a great day. I think wine over there is different but it’s a warmer region. Much like I’ve noticed in WA, great southern wines are my favourite and they have a very cool climate. However, we did taste some very nice wine and if it was easier to get it back to Australia and I had the room, I probably would have bought more. And that was the end of the tour. The bridge was sadly still shrouded in fog on the return trip. After that, it was an early night, it had been a busy two days.

Ok, so I’m on the plane for (edit:most of) this post. The plane is still on the ground but we’re about to set off on our way home to Sydney, I’m pretty happy that I paid the extra for the exit row. It wasn’t cheap, but it’s nice to be able to stretch. The Dreamliner has an individual PowerPoint even for economy which is nice.

So Thursday, the journey to San Francisco and some tourism too – don’t you love time differences! It was an early start on Thursday, I had to be up at 5.15. I had booked a car for 5.45 and I’m glad I did that. It wasn’t cheap, but it was easy and reliable and got me to the airport without any fuss. I’m glad I got to the airport when I did though – not long after 6 for a 7.55(ish?) flight. The queue for bag drop was that long, I spend over 45 minutes waiting. In the end, I got to my gate about 5 minutes before boarding started. The JetBlue experience was as good as last time and we touched down in San Francisco about 15 minutes early.

After a short wait I got my luggage and managed to find my way to the pick up point for Uber. I got to the Mosser and apparently I arrived right at the shift change. After assuring them that I had paid for early check-in it was only about a 10 minute wait. The hotel room is probably the smallest room I’ve ever seen (photos to come in future post). It was fine – I wasn’t planning on spending a lot of time there, but more than one person and you’d be falling over yourself. I had a brief nap, it has been an early start and I didn’t get as much sleep as I wanted the night before.

Then it was time to head down to Pier 33 for my Alcatraz tour. Google public transport directions are pretty good in the US and somehow my iPhone had already told me about how to use Apple Wallet to pay so that was fairly straightforward. However, I freaked out a little when I re-read the Alcatraz booking on the way and realised I was supposed to be there half an hour before my ticketed time. Despite my attempt to stop the street car (read tram) I still overshot my stop by one. This lead to me running down the street and making it to pier 33 just under 10 minutes before my boarding time. I wasn’t the only one running late and we were able to board the ferry without problem.

The surprise on the ferry ride over was how foggy it was. Alcatraz seemed to be shrouded as I learned and you’ll see evidence of, this isn’t that uncommon in June in San Francisco. Alcatraz was fascinating. There were two main things I looked at. Firstly was the new exhibition about the native American / Indian occupation of Alcatraz. This was something I didn’t know about Alcatraz and it was really interesting to read their stories and understand it. The second major part was obviously Alcatraz as a prison. I did the audio cell tour which was amazing. At the end there was a museum about what a problem America has with incarceration and it’s more a recent phenomenon. There’s no solution but the statistic of 1 in 10 people being in prison at some point was astonishing.

We were told their was a possibility of views of the Golden Gate bridge but it was far to foggy. It was also getting cold so everyone sat on the inside of the ferry on the way home – the outside spots were no longer popular. By this time I was very tired – early start and time difference so I headed back to the hotel got some food (grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s this time) and went to bed, knowing I had an early start the next day too.