California 2006

Redwoods, Wine and Llamas

It wasn't raining quite as hard this morning. So we stuffed our faces with the complementary pastries in the hotel. Again. And then caught a cooking-oil fuelled bus for our wine tour. It was run by a lady called Catherine, who didn't stop talking from 9.15am until she dropped us back at the hotel at 7pm.

We started at Muir Woods, a redwood forest where they filmed the Ewok scenes from Return of the Jedi! I was so excited. Then we were taken to a really nice bistro for lunch where our nutty guide made us order our food then run across the road for 15 minutes at a cheese factory before going back to eat.

The vineyards were all nice, but the wine was disappointing and expensive. Visiting vineyards is an industry in itself, with huge crowds turning up on buses and every place having its own food/T-shirt/fridge magnet line. If only they spent as much effort on the wine...

The Golden Gate bridge

A slice of a giant redwood, where they filmed Vertigo

Hannah pretending to be an Ewok

It's worse than its bite. Hahahahahaaaaa...

Sonoma Jack cheese, a poor relation to the mighty Somerset Cheddar

Hannah and lots of cheese

At the vineyards

About enough wine

Wine tasting, but you had to pay $5 for the priviledge! We didn't.

The winery's llama, called Dolly.

Hannah, David, the Golden Gate bridge

David and the tour guide, when she stopped talking for three seconds

Then it started raining again. So we went out to a Mexican restaurant where we had roasted cactus and I had a cactus juice cocktail. San Francisco is just the best! We're driving back to San Clemente tomorrow, so I'll take lots of pictures of road signs.