Freakin’ big $ for very little wine

Ah.... Californian wine country......... 

Sonoma is a pretty little town and the sister city to Napa - less expensive and more down to earth apparently. We start off the day with a hearty breakfast as we are going to be wine tasting - we booked a guided tour so that Peter doesn’t have to drive/ride.  We meet the bus - it’s called Platypus Tours  (we still don’t know why) and the guide is an ex-US Navy, intelligence, counter terrorism, super spy, viticulture guru full of stories....about himself.

There are 5 couples all up and they were all great fun. We visit 4 wineries and each provides 5-7 tastings (mostly reds)  and each are carefully measured.  The wife in an English couple didn’t drink red wine so we teamed up and kept asking for repeat tasting of the whites......now you may think why bother? Well the tour cost $100US each - including a salad lunch - and each winery charges $15-$30 per person for the tasting (refundable if you purchase 6 bottles or more). Think about it - that’s about $180 for the equivalent of around 2 glasses of wine max!  Worse of all, everyone was taking a sip of each wine and the pouring the rest in the spit bin!!!!!!

Grover used the spit bin for another purpose.....

Regardless - it was a great day, the weather was perfect, company lots of fun and there was wine! 

Back to the hotel in tIme to wander around the town in search of dinner.  All of the shops are decorated for Halloween - they take it very seriously over here.

We decided to stay on at Sonoma for 2 more nights to take a rest off the bike and enjoy the sunshine. The next day Peter took off for a ride to the coast (about 30 miles away) while I stayed back to do some washing and catch up on a few jobs........was very busy

 ..........by the pool.  Lucky I packed by togs by mistake! 

I also managed to finally find something to watch on tv other than football or baseball - and the ads are hilarious.  Every ad break they advertise some wonder drug  - helps cure cancer, saves you from heart attack etc- there’s 15 seconds about the drug and then another 30 listing all the conditions where taking it may cause death - at the end you can’t remember anything about the drug in the first place!

After a couple of relaxing days, we get ready to hit the road south with luggage full of fresh clothes.....