Another day that didn’t go exactly as planned but that came out just fine anyway.

The unplanned part that was really great was breakfast from Starbucks that daughter Rebecca provided. What a nice and thoughtful Mother’s Day treat! It took the pressure off finding a place to eat on our way to our scheduled 10:30 meet-up in Napa.

The trip from the St. Francis to Yountville took a little over an hour, passing over the Golden Gate Bridge.

Judy and I like wine, enjoy wine tastings and have done them all over the world – New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, Virginia, the Finger Lakes, and probably a bunch I’ve forgotten. But we’re not wine connoisseurs. We know what we like but don’t make a science or art of evaluating wines and we don’t remember names of vineyards or their products. Judy likes sweet wines like Rieslings and dessert wines. I like just about anything; my pallet is very accommodating and undiscriminating.

Our objective today was to experience Napa Valley, sample some wines, stock up for the coming summer at Onawa and to have a much more relaxing and laid-back day than yesterday’s forced march from one end of San Francisco to the other.

Our strategy: 1. Consult with niece Amy who knows her wine stuff inside and out. She gave us a list of hotels and wineries to visit. She also recommended hiring a car and driver to take us on the tour. 2. We did as Amy suggested, having the hotel arrange for Manny to do the driving. I gave him Amy’s list. I must confess I didn’t give him the list until two days before our arrival.

Manny, in his infinite wisdom, I’m sure, set us up with three entirely different wineries plus a stop for lunch. And we didn’t ride with Manny. His guy Kara was behind the wheel of the Mercedes SUV. Kara has an interesting story. His other gig is selling Turkish rugs (he’s from Turkey). He used to work on cruise boats in the restaurant operations. He was recently in charge of Mediterranean restaurant but quit to be near his pregnant fiancée.

The first stop, Reverie II, had little in the way of sweet wines but was interesting in other respects. It’s an operation that originated when a New York investment banker and wine connoisseur convinced his firm to invest in several Napa Valley wineries, creating a large holding operation in California. The banker went on to set up his own vineyard that he sold to a Chinese hotel operation who needed his real estate. He started yet another vineyard, Reverie II, which he then transferred to his business employee. I’m guessing that that’s a familiar story in Napa: wine lovers start, buy and sell properties willey-nilley. The nice thing about this visit was a Kawasaki Mule ride up the hill for a nice view as we sampled another wine.

Napa Valley shows the effects of recent fire damage. A fire in October of 2020 encroached on the Reverie II property. Other fires in 2017 caused even more widespread damage elsewhere in the valley. In general, the eastern hills that define Napa Valley are burned. The western hills not.

Lunch was pleasant at Sam’s Social Club. We’ve fallen in a rut: we had crab cakes benedict for the second day in a row. The temperature got to the low 80s today and the air circulation where we were sitting was poor, so we got pretty warm.

I texted Manny complaining of the lack of sweet wines at our first stop. Be careful of what you ask for: he redirected our second stop to the Prager Port Wine operation, a family-owned winery that has Judy as it’s target market. Having been exposed to Port wine in Portugal, we had some idea of what Port wine should taste like. At least one version passed our test as did a late vine Riesling. We sampled in the shade and relaxed. No great vistas to photograph but a very laid-back way to spend a couple of hours.

Stop three was at the Sattui vineyard, a much larger operation with a much broader selection of wines. Judy did four sweet wines while I tasted five reds. Again, not being an expert, we can’t swear that this is the best wine to flow from Napa, but they tasted just fine to us.

Net result: a pleasant day in beautiful weather and beautiful scenery and a stock of wine to serve at Onawa. Stop by for a glass this summer! Next time we’re dragging Amy along to do it right.

Napa is, if nothing else, expensive. Think gas for $4.25 per gallon and a 12-inch pizza for $32. Everything else is proportionally high. I won’t tell you how much we’re paying for our very nice room but Memorial Day weekend it’s going for $1,200 a night. We got an absolute bargain compared to that.

Speaking of pizza, we had a really great three onion pizza at Ciccio’s down the road from our hotel.

I’d tell you what the plan for tomorrow is but there isn’t one. At least I won’t have screwed up the arrangements this time. Judy is sitting next to me on the couch strategizing. So far, we’ve committed $8.50 for a 9:30 AM parking spot at Muir woods. After that, we’ll see.

Again, pictures are out of order. Look at them in reverse order – that’s closer to chronological then the other way!

There’s no two ways about it: the best way to see a city is on foot. We’ve done the rest, from private car and driver to small group excursions to mega bus tours and hop-on hop-off buses. We’ve done motorized toc-tocs and pedal bikes. River boats. You name it. But if you want to get a real feel for a town you’ve gotta expend some shoe leather. 

That’s what we’ve done today, leaving the St. Francis a little before 8. As I stand here in line at Ben and Jerry’s near Fisherman’s wharf at 5 PM (double scoop Cherry García in waffle cone = lunch) we have done 20,667 steps, 8.85 miles and 180 flights climbed. We still have our harbor cruise and dinner at the Franciscan Crab at 7 yet to go. We’re going to slack off and Uber it back after dinner. 

The original plan was to hoof it down to Pier 39 to see the stinkin’ sea lions before the tourist crowds gathered and then go to Mama’s for breakfast (“You won’t have to eat for a week,” the guide blog says). But by the time I had a fix for loading pictures into the blog (ask me sometime over a beer) we decide to skip the lions and go direct to Mama’s. 

Bad idea. Mama’s didn’t open until 9; we didn’t want to cool our heels for :30. Better idea: the guy at Mama’s directed us to Pat’s a few blocks away where we had a delightful breakfast of mimosa and crab cakes Benedict. Perfect. 

And guess what? Pat’s is only a few blocks – uphill – from the famous really curvy section of Lombard street. We drove down it 30-odd years ago with the kids. I climbed up this time. Judy held down the fort at the base. 

Next stop: the Ghirardelli chocolate shop (shared chocolate chip cookie and a bag of assorted dark chocolate pieces). The park just across the street had nice views of the Golden Gate Bridge with tons of swimmers swimming from buoy to buoy in a sheltered portion of the bay. We wished Reagan was with us to give it a try. 

We sauntered up the Embarcadero, planning on reaching Pier 33 in time for our 1 PM sailing to Alcatraz. We covered the stinkin’ sea lions on the way. Not too many tourists and the winds were favorable. 

We made Pier 33 with time to spare only to figure out that the Internet entrepreneur I booked the tickets with pulled a fast one and moved us to the 2 PM departure without warning. I didn’t receive the tickets until last night, and then from an email address I didn’t recognize. Grrrr. Let’s see. With a 2 PM departure we’ll. Be back by 5. With luck we can make the 5 PM boat cruise and thus be able to make 7 PM dinner. Ok. We’ll go with it. 

Bonus: with an hour to kill I can climb Telegraph Hill to Coit Tower while Judy does ice cream. It was a hike, only 0.3 google miles but all up hill. Turns out Coit Tower is closed, which was ok by me since it meant I could claim bragging rights without having to climb the blamed thing, which we’d done before with the kid’s way back when. 

Alcatraz, which again we did before, was great. We did the iPhone-based audio tour of the cell blocks. Well done narrative carefully designed and controlled to avoid big crowds. The grounds are quite beautiful with lots of flowers in bloom and nesting gulls and cormorants. Beautiful views of the city too. it’s hard to realize we were 15 and 16 years old when Alcatraz was closed in 1963. 

We made it back at 4:45 with a 15-minute walk to make the 5:00 departure. Inspiration: I hired a bike cab guy to take us. Arrived with 10 minutes to spare. 

But the info I received last night said, in the fine print, that the voucher needs to be converted into a ticket. Shame on me for not reading the fine print. Shame on the Internet guy for sending the details so late. As much as we cursed the Internet guy we wouldn’t have been able to do Alcatraz if he hadn’t bought up tickets for resale, bundled with bay cruise tickets. Smart fellow even if his execution leaves a lot to be desired.

But bottom line, we made the 6 PM boat, had a nice bay cruise including a brief pass under the Golden Gate Bridge (it’s really rough and windy out there) and got to Franciscan Crab at 7:01. 

We weren’t seated until 7::30 (Mother’s Day diners were dawdling over their food) but it was worth the wait.  Mojito and sangria drinks to start, a shared crab salad and then a whole dinginess crab with lots of butter – five legs each. Unbelievably tasty. Look out lobster. Here comes the crab. Best meal we’ve had since Biah and Rick served us crab on their houseboat in Vancouver. 

Uber was prompt and we’re back home. Tomorrow: Napa

San Francisco? We’ve done it. Mark it off the list. 

Here are the pictures, in no particular order. Someday I’ll figure out how to sort them Not tonight; it’s too late!

 

Covid-wise, things went well with only two hiccups. First, the lady sitting next to me on the Atlanta flight was quite sternly reprimanded by a schoolmarmish flight attendant for failing to restore her mask after she took a bite of her breakfast muffin. Fortunately, I’m podded with the lady in question so I’m not at any great risk.

The bigger Covid impact was at the Thrifty Rent-a-Car desk. Because they had only three car-prep people who were vaccinated for Covid, we were facing a two-hour wait for our car. The nice Thrifty lady suggested we check out the competition. Sure enough, National had an SUV for about the same money. Problem solved.

But not really. Instead of cruising California in a Mustang convertible with a cute girl at my side with her hair blowing in the wind it’ll be a soulless truck I’ll be driving. Sigh.

OK, she’s silver-haired now but back in the day she was blond, before she dyed it red. Still kinda cute, though.

Other than that, the trip has been an experience that would warm the heart of Dr. Faucci. I don’t think we’ve seen a person without a mask all day, not in any of the three airports, not in the airplanes, not on the streets of San Francisco, not in the R&G Lounge in Chinatown.

We’re booked at the Westin St. Francis hotel on Union Square, a fashionable district with lots of big-name shopping stores. We picked the St Francis because this is the hotel my mom, Professor Lilian Libby Rick, stayed while giving a learned presentation at the Modern Language Association back in 1978. Judy and I, purely by chance, stayed in the same hotel for a convention at exactly the same time so we got to sightsee with her between our various professional duties.

We checked in around 3 PM and by 4 PM were ready to hit the pavement. Chinatown is about a mile’s walk, a little more than half-way to the Coit Tower towards Fisherman’s Warf.

The front desk guy (no concierge at the St. Francis these days) recommended the restaurant, his favorite, and especially the salted fried crab dish. The crab was going for $60 and so we settled for a beef and turnip clay pot dish and one that featured steam clams in a scrambled egg like concoction. We’re always one to try something new and the clay pot proved the virtue of being gastronomically adventuresome. The clams? Not so much. A great thought but the two flavors don’t mix well, we thought. We should have sold another share of Tesla and gone for the crabs I guess.

So now we’re fading (it’s 7 PM here, 10 PM God’s time in Tampa) and we were up at 5. We’ll get to bed as soon as the sun sets. Unless the city lights keep us up. We’ll see.

Today’s pictures include some Judy took from the airplane window as we flew between the Rockies and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges. There’s some I snapped from out hotel room and as we walked to Chinatown.

I, Judy, had never flown over the southern part of Colorado.  It was amazing with the colors and the contours. It seemed absolutely desolate. I really could not see any habitation from the plane. We gradually moved into the snow-capped mountains of the Sierra Nevadas.  It really pointed out to me how varied the natural landscape is in this beautiful country.