What a day we had today! After a great breakfast at the hotel, we headed to Trader Joe’s for a few things on our “to buy” list and then we were off, up the US-101 towards San Francisco. We hit some traffic as we were leaving San Jose, but for all intents and purposes, it wasn’t too bad. Once we hit San Francisco, we got off the freeway and were on city streets for a few miles – it was surprisingly easy to navigate. Mum and I were both surprised as we had cursed this city when we were here five years ago.
We made it across the Golden Gate Bridge and I was able to pull over and park at the vista point. I was beyond excited at being able to get some pictures of the bridge. When we crossed it five years ago we were coming southbound and were required to pay a toll. This would not have bothered me if we had been able to enjoy the view – it was so foggy that I wasn’t even able to tell that the bridge was orange. Today, we headed northbound (toll-free) and had a beautiful sunny day – the Gods were definitely smiling down on us.
At the vista point, I grabbed my cameras and headed to a good vantage point. Anyone looking at me would have automatically known I was a tourist as I had my point-and-shoot as well as my camera with a polarising filter around my neck – and there I was, taking pictures with my iPhone. Needless to say, I wanted to make sure I got a ton of photos.
Once I had determined that I had enough pictures, we continued up US-101 towards Petaluma. Mum loves the Seed Bank and I always seem to find something in the Chinese gift shop across the street. This year was no different. By this time we were feeling peckish, so I entered the address for Willie Bird’s into my GPS and away we went to Santa Rosa. This was our fourth visit to Willie’s – as you can tell we love the food. This time, I totally forgot to take pictures of what we ate, but it was the same as in previous years. We both had the light lunch which consists of half a turkey salad sandwich and I had the potato salad and Mum had the turkey noodle soup.
After lunch, it was time to check into our hotel. What was normally a straight drive up Santa Rosa Avenue became convoluted when I realized that they put a courtyard in my way. The road is now closed between Third and Fourth, forcing traffic to detour around. We found our way and pulled into our favourite hotel – this is our third stay here. We chilled for a couple of hours and watched a The Best Thing I Ever Ate marathon before heading out to do some shopping at Raley’s. Yet again we had a productive shopping trip and then headed to Tex Wasabi’s for dinner.
We were able to get a great parking spot – something we normally luck out and get – and were also able to get seated immediately as the restaurant wasn’t very busy. We mentioned to the hostess that we hadn’t been there in over three years and she told us that Guy Fieri had sold his Sonoma County restaurants to his partner – we were saddened by the news but decided to stay and eat anyway.
Mum started with a Shrimp Spring Roll and I had the Jackass Sushi. This is my first ever sushi, and although it was Gringo Sushi, I was quite impressed with myself as it contained avocado. Mum then had the Teriyaki Chicken Salad and I had an order of Vegas Fries (fries tossed with buffalo sauce and served with bleu-sabi). I have been craving Vegas Fries since I last had them in May 2013 and was unable to get them when I went to Guy’s Vegas restaurant in 2014.
Mum and I enjoyed our meals but agreed that it just wasn’t the same as it used to be. We both decided that it is unlikely that we will return – this is sad as it was one of my favourite Food Network restaurants.
We came back to the hotel and did our wiki-research; which dealt mainly with California Penal Institutions. Then we headed to bed. Tomorrow we will be doing our tour of Wine Country.
Thank you for reading and I will talk to you later.
L
