Napa Valley/San Fran honeymoon

PLaBauve

We just found out that we will be going to Napa and hopefully San Fran for our honeymoon!!! Does anyone have any suggestions of vineyards, restaurants, clubs and attractions we shouldn't miss? I'm starting to get overwhelmed with all the information I am looking at LOL

Peledreamsofrain

Congrats!  Napa is really fun, I enjoyed it when I went there a couple of years ago.  The main peice of advice I have regarding the area is to bring your own lunch.  There is some weird law in place that prevents the wineries from selling food, and there are no restaurants immediately along the road for a good long segment.

Only one winery is grandfathered in and can sell food, which makes it PACKED during meal times.  Very unpleasant.

fallbride1109

We just did this trip in July and it was sooo fun.  We spent 4 nights in SF, the rented a car downtown and drove to Sonoma (after seeing Muir Woods), had lunch and did a few tastings, then drove to Napa, spent the night in Napa and toured Napa the next day (I think we had lunch in Calistoga), then drove back to SF for 2 more nights.

If you want to, you can read my trip report I wrote on Trip Advisor and it has pictures.  We did alot (except we didn't tour Alcatraz which most people say is a must).  Another thing we didn't do which is popular is drive into Sausalito.  There are a ton of vineyards--we were with a friend who chose everything for us but I enjoyed them all.  Trip Advisor is a good source for planning.

SF:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g60713-i30-k5576077-I_left_my_feet_in_San_Francisco_A_Trip_Report-San_Francisco_California.html

Napa:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g32766-i258-k5579727-Our_2_days_in_Sonoma_Napa_July_5_6-Napa_Napa_Valley_California.html

Summer2011Bride

We did San Fran with a day trip to napa in July (and then drove down to Carmel for a few days).

If you are looking for a Napa tour to try, I would HIGHLY recommend Max Napa Tours (he also does Sonoma tours). You can pay extra for a private tour, or his regular tour only takes a max of 6 people (we went with just one other couple). He drives a nice SUV and it is not crowded like most of the big bus or shuttle tours are.

He asks what types of wine you like and caters the wineries to your tastes. He knows SO many people in Napa and we were able to go to some small wineries that the larger tours don't go to. My personal favorite was the Terraces. The owner drove us around his vineyard in a golf cart and we tasted wine in his kitchen. It was amazing. There is no sign by the road--you have to know where it is and buzz in at the gate.

Another fun winery was Prager's Ports (they only sell port) and the tasting room had a bunch of dollar bills and other currency on the wall. It was a fun, laid-back atmosphere.

He took us to lunch at SolBar which was at a super nice resort in Napa and had amazing food! It was so nice to have someone drive us around and be able to educate us on wine.

For SF: I second going to Sausalito (we rented bikes at Blazing Saddles and biked the bridge over then returned on the ferry). Favorite day of our SF trip. I would highly recommend walking around North Beach and eating at one of the many delicious Italian restaurants there. Check out Chinatown. We really enjoyed our Alcatraz tour and I've heard great things about the night tour. We also got drinks at the Top of the Mark and really enjoyed the view (and I had an excellent martini!)

Dinner recommendation: Frascati. Get the stone fruit bruschetta!

cwaggoner07

If you're really into chocolate, you can go to the Ghiradelli Ice Cream Shop off the Wharf. It's a little tourist-y, but we are suckers for ice cream and chocolate, and we went 2 nights in a row as a 'night cap.'

hoffse

I haven't been to Napa, but I have a lot of family in San Fran.  I personally love china town (great food, neat shops) and Muir Woods is really cool.  I also recommend going to Stanford and hitting the mall there if you are interested in shopping.  It's really neat, outdoors, fantastic stores, etc.

I have to say that perhaps my favorite city I've ever been to in the US (including Boston, New York, DC, New Orleans, Charleston, Savannah, etc.) is Carmel.  It's teeny tiny but adorable with all these really cool shops - one of which has nothing but antiques, fabric, furntire, and imports from France.  It's next door to Monterey, which has a seriously cool aquarium.  On one side they have a wall into the ocean, so you can basically watch fish swim by that aren't captive.  The beaches there are also state-owned, so they are untouched and wild, and the drive is really beautiful down along the coast with basically no manmade structures through a solid chunk of it.  It's a really gorgeous place, and you can do Monterey/Carmel in a single day as a day trip.

TurtlesAllTheWayDown

We spent our HM in Napa. If you are driving from SF, do NOT go there on a Saturday! The line of cars going in is insane.

If you have a chance to go to Sonoma there are a lot of tasting rooms and whatnot in Santa Rosa. Also some good restaurants and breweries.

Mustard's Grill and Solbar (in Yountville and Calistoga) are very good restaurants. We also did a special dinner at Cyrus in Healdsburg (Sonoma County). We couldn't get a reservation at French Laundry, but I've heard a lot of locals say they actually prefer Cyrus.

We stayed at the Old World Inn in Napa and loved it. We could walk to a lot of places, even though the city of Napa is the most "bustling" of the communities in the county. You can go to lots of restaurants and tasting rooms on foot. Also, they had wine tastings in the evenings.

For wineries, our favorites were Bouchaine (in the southern area/Carneros) and Fleury (by appointment only I believe). Castello dio Amorosa was designed to look like a medeival castle, so that was really cool. Vi Satui has picnic/lunch stuff, so we went there early (10:30/11) and had an early lunch of cheese, bread, fruit, etc, plus a bottle of wine we had bought.

We only drove through SF on the way back - I was most interested in driving over the Golden Gate bridge, visiting City Lights book store, and getting burritos in the Mission District. (We got lunch at Pancho Villa - highly recommended hole-in-the-wall kind of place.)