This is a transcript of an episode of the Amateur Traveler podcast focusing on traveling to the Napa Valley in California’s Wine Country

• Travel to the Napa Valley in California’s Wine Country – Episode 190
• More blogs posts about Napa Valley
• More podcasts about California

Chris: I’d like to welcome to the show Carol Terwilliger Meyers, who is the author of Weekend Adventures in San Francisco and Northern California:. And we’ve invited Carol to come on and talk about the wine country north of San Francisco. Carol, welcome to the show.

Carol: Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Chris: It’s a pleasure for me too. The wine country is certainly some place I’ve been. It’s only an hour or so from where I live, but I really wanted somebody who had a little more expertise, who had a little more knowledge about it. And when I say the wine country in California, that is increasingly an inaccurate term because we grow grapes for wine all over the place here. So, where do you think of when I talk about the wine country north of San Francisco?

Carol: It’s true. It really is spreading out. I think most people think of Sonoma and Napa and Napa probably first.

Chris: Uh huh.

Carol: That’s probably the accurate description when you say it like that as, “The Wine Country”. But there’s vineyards and wineries all over the place.

Chris: Ok. And why would somebody go to that area and what should they do?

Carol: Well, I think that Napa is probably the place most people have heard about and so if you’ve never been up here before, that’s probably where you want to start.

Chris: Uh huh.

Carol: But one of the things to keep in mind if you’re visiting Napa is the town of Napa is different from the Napa Valley.

Chris: Right.

Carol: The town of Napa is more like a portal into the valley. The town is doing a lot of building right now to put in hotels and restaurants and all kinds of things to make it more visitor friendly. So it’s becoming a nicer place to stay at this point and there’s more things to do there. There are plenty of wineries around Napa. But most people find themselves on Highway 29 going through to the Napa Valley on up to St. Helena and Calistoga. That’s one section of the wine country and then the other section is the Sonoma area, which is just to the west of that, not that far away. And it would be easy as a visitor spending the night to come and do one part of the wine country one day and another part another day. Those of us that live in the area, can easily go there just in a day and back again. So it’s possible to spend the night in San Francisco and just go to the wine country for a day.

Chris: Right. So we talk about this as both as a destination and also as a possible side trip, for instance, from a visit from San Francisco.

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