Update from 4-5th day in SF

Viansa winery

Wednesday we had a long walk to the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts (after getting on not-quite-the-right-bus-but-kind-of-close), which is an amazing building built in 1915 for an international world show. Now it houses a hands on science & technology show called the Exploratorium, it is very similary to the one at Motat in Auckland but 10X larger, it took us 4 hours to go through most of it but it was excellent. After the Exploratorium, another long (but interesting) walk through the marina district back to Fishermans Whalf. We then went to the San Francisco aquarium which is almost exactly the same as Kelly Tartons but without the penguin enclosure - took us about 15 mins to see the entire thing. That evening after going back to our hotel we decided we needed to do some laundry so off to a typical American laundry up the road - complete with the resident strange mumbling man who talked to himself continuously while doing his laundry....

Thursday we spent the day doing a wine tasting tour out to Napa County and Sonoma - about an hours drive north of SF. The countryside was very dry, no green grass, everything golden brown in colour. Apparently there is no rain at all here suring summer - not even a shower! First stop was a traditional style winery, which used to be a western style ranch. Three different wines to taste here, all were very nice. After that off to an organic winery - Madonna Estate, the wine was also very nice here. We then stopped for lunch at Sonoma Square - this was like something out of the movies, a sleepy old fashioned small American town, very pretty. Our final stop for the day was Viansa winery - this place had the wow factor, built on top of a bluff overlooking the surrounding countryside. Our guide sweared it was exactly the same landscape as Tuscany - rolling golden brown hills, blue skies and vines as far as the eye could see. The actual winery building was modelled on something from Italy and was very impressive complete with vaulted wine cellar. Despite all of this the wine here wasn't all that great! Still, the view and surroundings made up for it - apparently this is a favourite place for wedding receptions and it's easy to see why.