Napa

We took an early morning flight from O'Hare to San Francisco, then hopped in our rental car for a drive to Wine Country. Our first stop was at Sterling Winery, which is one of our favorite locations, both for its beauty and its wines. Sterling is very kid-friendly, with the skyway tram from the parking lot up to the winery as well as juice boxes for the kids at the wine tasting room.

Following Sterling, we drove to Castello di Amorosa, whose primary draw is the Tuscan replicate castle. The owner of V. Sattui, another of our favorite wineries, built a 121,000 square foot stone fortress in Tuscan style. The kids enjoyed the castle tour and then Janie and J. R. enjoyed the wines while the kids ate breadsticks.

Following our winery tour, we stopped at the Rutherford Grill restaurant in Napa for lunch, which was just okay, and then headed to our hotel outside Napa, where we went to bed early, after a long day thanks to the time change.

Stanford Tour

The real purpose of our trip to San Francisco was for Alex to visit Stanford University, one of the schools on his list for undergraduate study. So we rose early, had the very limited breakfast at our hotel and drove out to Palo Alto. With time to kill before our tour, we stopped at a Denny's near Palo Alto for Alex to have some unlimited pancakes then headed to the University.

Our visit coincided with the Oregon-Stanford game weekend, so ESPN's College Game Day was setting up on the quad. We parked out near the stadium and walked over to the visitor center for our arranged tour.

Palo Alto

After our arranged tour, we walked back to our car, making a quick stop at the bookstore near the stadium so Alex could get a T-shirt. We also bought Rebecca a Stanford soccer T-shirt, then headed to downtown Palo Alto for lunch. We considered a couple of different places, but finally ended up at The Cheesecake Factory. Following lunch, we went back to campus to drive around and see some of the areas we had not seen on the walking tour.

Point Reyes

Our last full day in the Bay Area was set aside for sightseeing. We started off with breakfast in Vallejo at the "Good Day Cafe". It was a very good breakfast, quite different than the usual chain fare and got us going for the day quite well. After breakfast, we headed for the Point Reyes National Seashore to spend some time near the ocean. We drove around the overlooks at the ocean and hiked up to the lighthouse, which was quite chilly. We planned to visit some California redwoods after Point Reyes, but the locals were out in force and parking was at a premium, so we headed to downtown instead.

Golden Gate

Rebecca had been dying to see the Golden Gate Bridge so we headed to the Golden Gate park area that overlooks the bridge to get some pictures. Following that, we drove across the Golden Gate and then headed into downtown to Fisherman's Wharf for dinner before driving back to our hotel.