HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (08) - SONOMA

NOVEMBER 03

Nestling deeply in Wine Country, Sonoma is a lovely little town and, during our last couple of visits to California doing this sort of driving trip, we have started to make it our preferred “rest stop” to recuperate from the rigours of all that travelling over from England.

We’ve got a lovely little hotel/motel that we try and book into which is a few blocks’ walk from the town square, and generally manage to feel quite “at home” there as we relax and unwind and adjust ourselves into “California Mode” for a couple of weeks.

And so, after a good night’s sleep, and a reasonable “Continental” breakfast in a not quite too intimidating room full of Americans, we put on our walking shoes and set off into a bright, warm Monday morning to re-acquaint ourselves with this town with which we have become rather familiar.

I should take a moment here to explain the US concept of the “Continental” breakfast to the unwary. It basically means “self-service cold stuff” and involves pots of coffee, jugs or dispensing machines of fruit juice and baskets and bowls full of fruit, cereals and yoghurts.

There is usually a selection of pasties and breads – including that strangely sickly sweet American white sliced - to be heated or toasted (sometimes whilst your fellow guests wait behind you looking at their watches and muttering about time being money) and packets of butter, jam, “buttery-flavoured” spreads, cream cheese, peanut butter, and those strange little cartons of “half-and-half” to add to your hot drinks.

Perfectly adequate it usually is, but “Continental”…? I’m not so sure.

Anyway, it usually suffices and, once you’ve made the walk to town, there’s always a coffee shop or a diner in which you can adjuist for any shortcomings it might have had.

Our morning in Sonoma involved spotting more Turkey Vultures circling overhead (at a point in our trip where they still seemed exotic and unusual), a much-appreciated Cappuccino in a coffee shop called the “Sunflower Café”, a little bit of “Retail Therapy” (which cheered my Beloved up no end), booking a restaurant reservation, and paying a visit to the “Tourist Information Center” which did get slightly surreal as a “little old lady” tried to help us, despite not appearing to have any computer skills whatsoever.

To be fair, they were very friendly, and we were asking them to answer questions about a town in another county. Ask them about Sonoma County itself and they were sharp as a tack, but anything much beyond that and it all got a little vague, although they did point out a great place to visit which we would go to the following day.

They were also rather distracted by the youngish fellow who came bearing doughnuts who was apparently one of the co-managers of one of the finer vineyards, and consequently most probably the richest person in the room by far.

He was obviously seeking to publicise his business and did a very good job in impressing the ladies with his doughnuts, given the babble that went on about how lovely he was once he’d finally left.

He seemed to mostly be impressive because he was “tall” – which is obviously an important criteria of American attractiveness for the more mature lady – although, as a neutral observer, I got the impression that he was rather vague, ineffectual, and a bit of a numpty.

Still, what do I know, eh…?

We decided to have an afternoon taking advantage of the patio that we’d inadvertently booked as part of our hotel room package, and went to Sonoma Market on the way back to our hotel, and sat there (drinking wine and knowing how bloody lucky we were) and, later on, in our reclining chairs sorting out our next accommodation via my Kindle and completing the booking that we had hoped to do in the Tourist Office.

In the evening, after a gloriously distracting pink sunset, we went to “The Girl and the Fig”, a restaurant that we had enjoyed on a previous visit and which features in one or two of those “Million Restaurants to Eat In Before You Die” guides.

Sadly, in the true tradition of “You Should Never Go Back”, this time around we were rather disappointed by the place, and the fact that it felt very cramped, and they seemed rather eager to rush us out of the place.

Still, the food was good and the wine was even better, and it was all pleasant enough, and our “day for relaxation” came to a suitably enjoyable end.