Watch this space...: The City by the Bay (May 14-15)

Alright back and rested from a week of vacation. New things and new experiences and reconnecting with our good friends Ian and Gabi. I must say that Ian and Gabi are hard core tour guides but they are very good, here's the recap;

May 14th-Flew into San Fran and from there lunch at a local diner (Peninsula Fountain and Grill) a quick trip through Stanford and the ever elusive IKEA. From there we drove up and into the mountains and saw our first "traditional California" experience, redwoods. The redwoods were awesome, you can't get much better for serenity and peacefulness. It's definitely a trek but it was worth it. The trees are amazing. From there we came down the hills to Santa Cruz and saw an amazing view of the ocean and the "strawberry fields." Yes it was a little cooler than expected in California but there's something about the sea that helps clear your mind just a little bit.

Day 2 in Cali was spent in one of the worlds most expensive areas, Napa Valley. Most people know that I'm not the worlds' biggest wine drinker but we had to head up there on our day when our tour guides had to work. Let me first say that we as a country have to do something about our obsession with our vehicles 5 lane highways filled with single occupancy cars racing along, it's just not a good thing. Anyway Napa really is beautiful scenery however, some of it is a pretty bad tourist trap set for the "drink to get drunk" crowd and some is very elegant and pretty. We visited 3 wineries; Trefethen family vineyards, Sutter Home (mostly because we can buy them in Missouri), and V. Sattui. We ended up buying 3 bottles of wine 2 of which made it home, which is a fun story to tell about packing wine on a United flight, (you have to have styrofoam containers in a box for all alcoholic beverages wish we would have known that before we packed) and we also tried something new at a local deli. Grilled eggplant is not quite as good as you would think. Then we headed back to Sunnyvale and did some more of the local sights, including an In-N-Out Burger along with the "secret menu". From there we ended the day at Salt Ponds which were pretty but a little smelly.