Sunday, August 7, 2011

California Dreaming...

Dear friends,
A couple of you have asked when I was going to post pictures from my California adventure this past May with Gooch. Well, here it is and the pictures do not do it justice ~ Enjoy!

Driftwood in Carmel-by-the-Sea.


A little cafe in Carmel-by-the-Sea. I could have spent all day here people watching alone.

This was a house in Carmel that I totally stalked! It was on the corner of Ocean Ave & Scenic Drive.
 I think that says it all!

 
Swooooooon! Can't you see yourself having your morning coffee on the veranda overlooking the ocean?
 When everyone else is headed to work!  *Sigh*
 
Loved this rustic garage/shed. Carmel-by-the-Sea was filled with inviting vistas into private quarters.

Made it to Big Sur! Well worth the 30+ year wait since I first read about Big Sur in National Geographic as a little girl.


View of Bigsby Bridge

The terrain around Big Sur was constantly changing.


Leaving Big Sur. So sad, but siked to pick up Gooch and start our trip to SONOMA!


Let the fun begin!

We stayed @ a little B&B called An Inn 2 Remember. It was wonderful! Right on the square.
We were the life of the party here!  

Gooch and I got the bright idea to bike our way through Sonoma.
After all, we had ridden enough stationary bikes in our day! HA!
 
Gooch was ready for the challenge!
Our first stop, which took us out of the rain, was at Sebastiani Vinyards. Not our fave.
But we were in SONOMA after all and the rain had finally stopped!

Our next stop was on our top 5 list: Bartholomew Park Winery! It delivered - we purchased a couple of bottles & had them shipped home. Sadly they were consumed pretty fast and it is terribly difficult to find BPW out of California!
Guess we will have to visit again soon!!  
By this time we were STARVING! So we took a break from the bikes (and wine!) and
 found delicious treats in the Sonoma Market. We were VERY happy!

Speaking of the Sonoma Market, "The Bachelorette" finalist - Sonoma's own Ben Flajnik - will be at the Sonoma Market Friday, August 19th from 4 PM to 6 PM signing bottles of his Evolve Wines!
I can't believe I just shared that! LOL.

Next on our trek was one of Sonoma's oldest family run winery, "Gunbun" or Gundlach Bundschu.
We had a blast in their cave tour, more because of the cast of characters that were there..
and lets be honest, we had been drinking since 10:00AM! 

Taking in the view @ Gunbun.

Leaving GunBun this is what we found by their exit gates. Sooo true. Thank goodness we were headed to a private Cline Cellars tasting @ our B&B. By the way, Cline Cellar owners purchased the Italian Villa used in the Under the Tuscan Sun movie and are now hosting 8 day escapes to Italy for 9 lucky couples. Learn more HERE.

After the Cline tasting we were feeling REALLY REALLY good and stumbled into the Harvest Moon Cafe.
 We had the patio to ourselves, it was unseasonably cool for Sonoma, and we LOVED it!

We ate VERY well throughout our Sonoma trip but Harvest Moon Cafe was by far our favorite!

The food was amazing!

This was just our dessert menu!

Our selections. Yummy!

Sonoma was hard to leave. But San Francisco beckoned....


Gooch and I had such a fun time in California! This was just a little taste of our visit.
We have plenty more stories and pictures but I thought this was a perfect preview for now.
Hope you enjoyed it!

Share some of your Sonoma stories with us!

1 comment:

  1. As a native Californian I adore it all.

    I have a linky party called Wayfaring Wednesdays and you should link this gem up.

    ReplyDelete