A college friend who had never been to the Bay Area came to visit over President’s Day weekend. I tried to show him as much of San Francisco as possible. We also visited Tahoe and Napa.
On Thursday we drove to Kirkwood to ski. I’ve only ever been to Heavenly before and I was excited to try a new mountain. Heavenly has unbeatable views but the terrain is rather dull. I’m sure there are great areas of the mountain, unfortunately I just don’t know where they are yet. Kirkwood’s terrain on the otherhand delivers right off the bat. Lots of interesting steeps including several cornices. We had a great day exploring the mountain on very soft snow.
On Friday we tasted wine (and beer) in Napa and Sonoma Valleys. We had a fantastic tour and tasting at Hendry Winery just outside of Napa. The winery is run by two engineers who have used their skills to redesign and improve several pieces/techniques of the wine making process. I really enjoyed seeing the winery and hearing first hand about how it goes from grapes to bottle. If you are ever in the area and interested at all in wine tasting or wine making I highly recommend this place. They certainly don’t have the best wines in the Napa Valley but I really enjoyed geeking out there. The winery was beautiful in the misty/drizzly weather.
We also visited the Napa County Brewing Company as it was San Francisco Beer Week and they were holding special tours and sampling. We were the only people who showed up for the tour at this tiny brewery so we got to see the brewing process, taste the grains and even sample from the fermenter with the brewmaster. He then walked us through a sampling of all their beers. I’m not a beer fan myself but I did enjoy seeing the brewing process up close. SF Beer Week also included beer ice cream at our favorite ice cream shop, Humphry Slocombe. They were making ice cream out of many different beers and would feature 6 different beer ice creams each night during Beer Week. We enjoyed it so much we went back a second time!
We spent the weekend seeing the sights in San Francisco – Union Square, Ferry Building, Chinatown, Cable Cars, Fishermen’s Wharf, Ghirardelli Square, Lombard Street, Coit Tower – all the usual tourist spots. Something I hadn’t done before that was enjoyed was visiting the Cable Car Museum. The Museum houses the motors that pull the cables for the three cable car lines in San Francisco as well as exhibits on the cable car system over the years starting in 1873 with the Clay Street Hill Railroad.
On Monday we visited the Marin Headlands overlooking the city and got some spectacular views with the fog rolling out of the bay.
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