The stop at Muir Woods was for just an hour and ten minutes. If you walk quickly and don’t stop to enjoy the light, tranquillity and beauty of the woods you can walk up to bridge 4 and do the basic round trip, even if you don’t really have enough time enjoy the experience. But not everyone can walk fast enough or has the confidence to do this. It’s easy to say that everyone wants to spend more time there but in this case it is not a case of spending more time but just having enough time, say 90 minutes, to have a pleasant, short walk.
In fact, I spent longer In Sausalito waiting for the bus to Sonoma than I did in the woods.
And the Sonoma part of the trip was a disgrace. There were no “wineries” visited at all. The first stop was a roadside shopping centre that among its other shops had a place that sold wine. They put a water glass on the table but did not put water in it… instead telling us that if we bought some wine we could keep the glass (like a cheap supermarket offer). So a small glass of wine was poured and we were told the cost of a bottle, a case and shipping, then another glass and more sales talk…..there never was any water though. There was a tourist office in the complex though and they were very interested and disappointed to hear of this shambles of a tour– had the company been local they would have reported it to the trade body for giving the area a bad name but as it was from San Francisco there was nothing they could do.
The next place we stopped was worse. It was just a bar with little drops of wine being put into lots of glasses. Nothing was said about the grapes, the wine or indeed anything. There was just an expectation that you would buy some of the plonk.
The driver was a disgrace, he told me that we had not gone to anywhere wine was made as wine was not made in May – and back in the bus he was shrieking how we had all had a wonderful day visiting the “wineries”. No one I spoke to thought this. (The company is sly in telling you that they only decide on the day so you won’t know in advance that you won’t actually be anywhere near a true winery.) Despite his utter uselessness he had a large sign up telling us that he expected a 20% tip.
This was the worst excursion I have ever been on. It was an expensive waste of time and money. Better to take a longer trip to the woods alone and just try out some wine in San Francisco. My local wine shop had a tasting this afternoon, it was far better than the rubbish offered by the appalling “A Taste of San Franciso and Beyond”. The abiding memory is a very unpleasant taste in my mouth.