G0N and I had a bit of a treat last night, we got to sleep on sofas. Nice to have a bed that we can lie out fully without our head and feet hitting each wall of the van. Today we went off to visit the Napa Valley wine district, but first we took a slightly longer route so that we could go across the Golden Gate Bridge. We have seen some great bridges on our travels and as you may be able to tell from previous posts and the number of pictures, I really like bridges. As bridges go, the Golden Gate is a chart topper. It is a shame that the weather has been pretty bad today so the view was quite clouded in San Francisco fog, but it is still amazing and my favourite bridge of the trip, and may actually be my favourite of all time.
We went to the Robert Mondavi Winery in the heart of the valley where we had a tour showing us the whole process from vine to wine. A very interesting tour too, so much thought is put into every part of the process. The vines have to have the right soil, weather, with the vines in the right direction to make best use of the sunlight. Throughout the process the grapes are treated with great care so they don't get bruised, the fermentation and and ageing rooms are kept at a constant temperature and humidity. The whole fermentation and ageing process is performed so that gravity does all the work of carrying the grapes and wine around so that no damage is done to either. So on and so forth... it is great to see the lengths at which these world class wineries go in search of perfection. At the end of the tour we got a tasting session with three of the wines from the winery and tips on how to taste and what to look out for. The wines were the: 2006 Chardonnay Reserve, 2006 Napa Valley Merlot and the 2006 Stags Leap District Cabernet Sauvignon. The wines were all really good but the Stags Leap was really special a big American cab sav, lots of tannins but so smooth. It's a shame that it cost $85 a bottle, otherwise I may have picked up a couple.
We have just left an outlet store and as I don't really care for the sort of shopping that they had on offer, I had the chance to catch up with my blogs. Unusually for a mainly clothes based shopping experience, G0N spent the most, but I'll let him explain all of that. We are now on our way back to San Francisco to have dinner at Hooters. Charlotte wanted to go before she leaves the country and apparently you have to go there if in America, so that's that.
Cube out for now
Yup, Hooters is just like it is on TV and in film. A tacky bar/restaurant with sports memorabilia on the walls and large chested waitresses. The food is your normal American food but far too salty. We had chicken wings to start and I had a burger with blue cheese. Nice but too much salt and not the most balanced burger until I added a load of the accompanying salad, but still not the best burger in the world. It was fun to have been to a Hooters bar as they are a stereotypical American place to go.
On the way back from Hooters we decided that it would be fun to drive down Lombard Street in the van. The hills up to the top of town are crazily steep, fortunately the automatic gearbox made it easy, but I imagine lots of clutch burn going up those things in a manual when there is traffic around. Lombard Street itself was fun to go down as the van is fairly long and the street is really quite tight in the turns. There are signs saying no vans with with seating for 8 or more, whilst technically we cant sit more than 3 we are just as big as a minibus.
Right, sleep time for me. I'll just finish my blogs and go to bed. I will have to sort and upload my photos later.
Cube out
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