Vacation - Day 1

Wednesday, Sept 18 

Doug and I flew from DFW to SMF (Sacramento-CA) for our annual anniversary trip to wine country. This trip we would visit the Russian River Valley, Sonoma County and Napa Valley.

The car rental process at the airport was a little messed up. It turns out we were in town the same weekend as the America's Cup so there was a shortage of cars. Originally we were "upgraded" to a Jeep Liberty but Doug went back and talked to the customer service desk and we were finally given something much smaller. We then drove from Sacramento to Windsor (just north of Santa Rosa). It is about 110 miles and took a little over 2 hours, with a stop for lunch in Fairfield.

We arrived at the Holiday Inn Express around 4pm.  Doug checked in to the hotel while I was on the phone with our friends Ken/Kim planning our afternoon/evening.  Doug came out of the hotel holding two goodie bags, two bottles of water with a big smile on his face. Apparantly we had been "upgraded" to a suite as he reached the highest priority "Premium Elite" status with his long hotel stay during his recent trip to Paris.  Doug called it "Gold Glitter Sparkle"  status.  In addition to the room upgrade, Doug was given special designated parking privileges in the parking garage. The room was very nice and it had a separate sitting parlor which was nice for entertaining Ken &Kim with drinks after dinner.

We settled in and made our way to a local Safeway where we purchased 2 bottles of wine and a 6 pack of beer. We then headed back to the hotel to get ready for our dinner reservations at Corks. Kim and Ken (our designated driver for the weekend) picked us up at our hotel.

Below are the links to the Restuarant & Tasting Room
http://www.russianrivervineyards.com/?q=corks-restaurant
This is the link for the menu: http://www.russianrivervineyards.com/corks-restaurant/menus

Doug chose this restaurant based on the TripAdvisor reviews. We enjoyed our dinner out on the patio, under the twinkling lights. The food was awesome. Kim and I had the steak, Doug had salmon and Ken had the lamb. The wine selection was remarkable: 2010 Tercini Pinot Noir. This restaurant definately got extra points for ambience!  After dinner we headed back to our hotel for drinks and stories of the day.