One of my favorite days in intern year so far has been a random Tuesday when my friend R and I both had the day off and took a day trip to Sonoma. One of the few perks of being on medicine is having a random weekday off-- the roads are clear, shops are empty, and you can tour a vineyard basically by yourself. As an upper year resident next year, I'll get to join the rest of humanity with a weekend day off, but a part of me will miss having the week days off where you can run errands when the rest of the world is working (like today).
We took these pictures at
Benziger Winery in February. February!! This would have been impossible on the east coast, a fact that makes me come around to California more and more.
Benziger is a family run winery in Sonoma, Napa's lesser known sister city. Usually it's quieter and less crowded than Napa, but on this day, there wasn't a soul in sight to begin with. We were free to walk the grounds, take pictures, without bumping into a single person.
I taught my buddy R how to take take blogger photos! She's a natural.
For anyone visiting the area, I would definitely recommend Benziger's wine tour. Even though I've been to Napa and Sonoma many times, this was the first time I've done a wine tour into the vineyards, get to taste wine right out in the fields, and gotten to see the cellars where they age the wine. The tour ended with the tasting, and only cost $25 per person! Definitely a lot more valuable than some Napa wineries which charge $25 for the tasting alone.
After Benziger, we assembled some picnic supplies and ate lunch on the grounds of Artesa, Benziger's sister winery, where we also got a complimentary tasting for visiting Benziger. Artesa is unique for featuring different works of art on the label of every type of wine, and their headquarters even feature an art gallery.
On our way home from Sonoma, we stopped at Sonoma city center, which is a cute town square with novelty shops and restaurants. We didn't stay long as we wanted to catch our favorite view: the golden gate bridge at dusk! Last time we caught some nice golden hour pictures but didn't get to see the pretty pink and purples of dusk. We raced to Hawk Hill where we were able to glimpse this view.
And that marks the end of a perfect day trip from SF -- a perfect coincidence that we both had the day off. Thanks to R for coming with me!
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