Cindy Lou: San Fran...Day 2

We woke up pretty bright and early for two reasons...we were still on Central time so it did feel like we slept until 10 and we have a full day of sightseeing. But first, Joshua made us omelets...gotta love having a Sous Chef around. On the agenda today was Golden Gate Bridge, Muir Woods and Castello Di Amorosa Winery.

Marie was trusting and kind enough to lend us her car for the day. We would've rented a car but she wouldn't hear of it. Linda started driving toward the Golden Gate Bridge but suddenly Andrew needed to stop to get some fresh air. Uh-oh! It's gonna be a long day. We exited right before the Golden Gate Bridge to take some pictures since Andrew's never been and now that I think about it, neither has Joshua the first time we came to San Fran.

We did the usual tourist pictures and enjoyed the beautiful sunny day by the Golden Gate Bridge.

I love this pic of Joshua

Joshua and I with the foggy bridge

Linda and Andrew

Landscape shot

Joshua sitting on the rail making me nervous

Two thumbs up for this bridge

Da boys

Da sisters

Joshua and I again

The cables and cables that is used for the bridge

So huge!

I took over for the driving since Linda doesn't like to drive over bridges. Weird. Onto Muir Woods! The ride wasn't too bad but then when we got 5 miles closer, it didn't look good for Andrew. It was miles and miles of twisty turns, back and forth. Needless to say, he told me to pull over where there was no where to pull over and out the window he goes. Poor guy. He was so relieved to see we made it to Muir Woods finally.

We walked the trails of Muir Woods but not too far. We did about a 2 mile loop checking out the crazy tall trees. It was really peaceful in there even with the people around. I love nature!

The Muir Woods entrance

A very TALL tree

Joshua and nature

The average tree trunk

Very important ring years

Joshua checking out the downed tree

Love this pic with the sun shining through

Tree growing between two trees

Joshua inside a tree trunk

Split tree trunk

Loving the day

Now that we saw Muir Woods, it's onto the winery. Back out onto the windy roads and Andrew's stomach not being very happy about that. It took us about an hour from Muir Woods to get to the Napa Valley area. We were starving at this point (it was 2:30 or so) so we drove around Calistoga near the winery that we had reservations for and looked for a place to get a quick bite. The small town of Calistoga didn't have much. A few sit down restaurants, some more fancy than others but we settled for a Mexican place. We quickly ate our lunch which was quite delicious. I had chicken quesadilla and Joshua had chicken tacos. Yummy!

We quickly went off to find the Castello Di Amorosa Winery and when we did, wowsa! It was certainly impressive! Pictures are worth a thousand words...

Joshua in front of the winery

The entrance to the tour

In front of the steps

Joshua standing inside that little cove

We checked in for our tour, thanks to Linda for making the reso. I did the basic wine tasting and tour but Joshua chose to do the reserve wine tasting and tour which meant he got to taste the very expensive reserve wine as well as the basic wines. Our tour was quite interesting. Not only did our tour guide tell us about how the wine was made, he gave us a lot of information as to how the castle came to be and many interesting facts about the castle.

Some interesting facts:
It was a 14 year process
107 rooms on 8 levels below and above ground
Roof tiles are casts of women's thighs
Has a 500 year old fireplace

It was very interesting seeing this castle. Even though it is fairly new, the whole place is original. Bricks were sent from Europe. Blacksmiths worked on many pieces. There is a moat, a drawbridge, defensive towers, a courtyard, a torture chamber, a chapel/church, a knights' chamber and a great hall all designed with authenticity. This winery definitely is in a class of its own. It's so unique that you can't buy their wine anywhere except from the winery itself. We took advantage of our checked bags so we bought two bottles of wine to bring back to WI and another one to use for dinner later on in the trip. I'm glad we went to this winery instead of Kendall Jackson or Mondavi or Beringer.