After more than 3 weeks of traveling, we have to admit that we began to feel a bit tired and washed out. So on Thanksgiving Day, we took a day off from our vacation and did as the Americans: relaxing, hanging out on the sofa and in the bed, cooking (OK, we skipped the Turkey and Pie but had delicious home-made Spaghetti Bolognese paired with a bottle of Sangiovese from the recently visited Castello di Amorosa). Oh, and we caught up on blogging and making the last preparations for our upcoming Central America trip.

On Friday, we went to explore the city. We walked Fisherman’s Wharf and the steep hills of San Francisco, through Chinatown and the (not-so-exciting) Financial District.

Public transportation in the Bay Area is generally pretty good, but very fragmented: Separate tickets are required for buses, BART, cable cars (the long wait time made us not take it) and, of course, Amtrak (Google Maps suggested taking the Amtrak bus from Oakland to San Francisco—not worth it).

Saturday marked the final day of the U.S. part of our trip. We took pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge at Battery Spencer (hard to get a parking spot even at this time of the year!), visited Alamo Square with its famous “Painted ladies” and spent the rest of the day in coffee shops in the up-and-coming Mission District.

So after quite exactly three years, it’s time to say Good Bye, USA!

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Before going to Napa Valley, we had done some prior research about doing a full-day or half-day guided bike tour that takes you to 4-5 wineries, or booking a shuttle service that would drive us conveniently to the different wine tastings, usually with a small group of other people. All of these options are pretty pricey—and the tasting fees (ranging between $15 and $30 each) at the wineries are not even included. We weren’t quite sure what the best option would be to explore Napa Valley, and whether we needed to be escorted and guided at all.

In the end, we were very happy that we decided to explore Napa Valley on our own, on bikes. And it’s definitely easy enough to do it individually and self-guided.

We stayed at a beautiful AirBnB in Calistoga, reputedly the most authentic village in Napa Valley. We were lucky that we could use the owners’ bikes, so we could pedal around with lots of flexibility and could save some money to spend on the tastings.

Biking around Napa Valley is definitely a thing to do when you visit this region. It’s easy, mostly flat, with designated bike lanes and routes of varying duration. Actually, the 4-5 wineries that are usually included in the guided tours would have been too much for us. During our afternoon bike trip of barely six miles, we only stopped at two Estates: Clos Pegase and Sterling Vineyards.

Sterling made Simone’s battle-tested tour guide heart beat faster, since it featured a gondola across the vineyards that took us up to the actual winery, where the wine is produced and visitors can participate in a self-guided tour with short info videos and info panels. So we could casually chat with the staff and sip wine at our own pace.

The famous Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon (or simply “Cab”) was indeed good—even though many Austrian and European wine regions and wines are in no way lagging behind when it comes to white wines.

Austria might be a small country, but the world is even smaller. In fact, we knew of fellow Austrian Georg Salzner (a native of Simone’s hometown St.Florian/Linz and brother of Simone’s parent’s friends) who is the President of a winery in Calistoga. And it’s not just any winery, it’s one of the most visited and unique ones in the whole Napa Valley: Castello di Amorosa, an authentically-built, 13th-century-inspired Tuscan castle residing on a hill overlooking the vineyards of the valley.

Georg gave us a very warm welcome and showed us around the Castello. We were absolutely impressed with the high level of attention to detail, by the castle’s wonderful location and by its backstory. The castle was built using authentic bricks (we even spotted a few bricks bearing the Habsburg Dynasty’s label with the Doppeladler), original furniture, arms and instruments of torture (because no authentic Medieval castle would be complete without a torture chamber, right?), all imported from Europe. Two painters from Italy were flown in to paint the frescoes in the stunning Great Hall, which took them almost two years. We also visited the wine cellar, the production area and got to ask many, many questions about wine making, the Napa Valley and how to get a job like this (serious career reconsiderations!). A wine tasting concluded our visit at the Castello di Amorosa. Our favourites: the Sangiovese and, of course, the Cab.

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Since we passed through the Bay Area again, we had to make a visit to the beautiful Stanford University campus, where Jan had spent the summer of 2011 working on some geeky project.

The best thing was that we met Csongor, Tania, Klara and even Pablo, who happened to be visiting from his new hometown Graz. The pizza was also fantastic.

Reunion with Klara, Csongor, Pablo and Tania.

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Some of the sequoia trees in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park are thousands of years old—the oldest ones we saw were up to 3,000 years old! Some of them are over 80 meters high, with a circumference of more than 30 meters, making them one of the tallest, widest, and longest-lived of all organisms on Earth. Barely able to see their top, we couldn’t help but feel really small and minor next to those giants.

We did a two-hour hike on Congress Trail, along which we saw giant sequoias such as the Sherman Tree, and others bearing such fitting names as the President, the Senate, etc.

A few miles north into the National Park, we also stopped at the General Grant Tree which was declared “the Nation’s Christmas Tree”. At almost one month to go until Christmas, we have to say, we liked the idea (although we’ll probably have a palm tree for Christmas).

Unfortunately, we were not able to do the scenic drive from Grant Grove to Cedar Grove since the roads are closed in winter. But we heard (well, Lonely Planet told us) that it must be one of California’s most spectular roads. Anyway, the drive up from Three Rivers was probably just as curvy and spectacular and offered great views as well.

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We drove through the desert, where there were almost no signs of civilization, except for a few gas stations, a single post office and a bank in the middle of nowhere. Jan got a little nervous before entering Death Valley National Park, so we stopped to get a full tank of gas, 24 bottles of water and a precautionary last-minute quesadilla, just to be prepared for any type of emergency. (Needless to say, throughout all national parks so far, we used to drive for miles without having phone service.)

At the first vista point in Death Valley, Zabriskie Point, it immediately felt incredibly quiet, especially after Las Vegas.

We took the scenic Artist’s Drive to Artist’s Palette, a stone formation that displays an array of colors, caused by the oxidation of different metals. (OK, science: you’re awesome.)

Death Valley also features the lowest point in North America at 85 m (279 ft) below sea level. The road was a constant uphill and downhill drive, from below sea level to 1000 m of elevation and back to almost sea level.

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Pacific Beach just north of San Diego was a place to charge batteries and relax a little after almost (only? already?) two weeks of traveling. We stayed there for four nights and enjoyed the good life with morning runs on the ocean front, breakfasts in the sun and with views of the Pacific, a couple of work hours at coffee shop terraces, and after-work beers.

We celebrated Jan’s special birthday in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, a historic neighborhood packed with bars, restaurants and clubs.

We’re not so much into zoos and aquariums, so we skipped the famous San Diego Zoo and Sea World. Instead, we saw the new James Bond movie Spectre in a drive-in cinema. On another afternoon, we visited La Jolla (sea lions are a little less ugly than sea elephants) and Torrey Pines State Park.

Some like it hot. And some really like Marilyn Monroe. So we visited Coronado Island, a small affluent city across San Diego Bay. (You really need to know How To Marry a Millionaire to live there!) Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but as for Simone, it’s rather “Blondes prefer Gentlemen”, since Jan took her to the famous Hotel Del Coronado on Corona Island, where the majority of Billy Wilder’s 1959 brilliant comedy “Some Like It Hot” was shot.

Actually, this was also the first movie the two of us saw together (Simone’s pick, obviously). Even without Marilyn, the hotel is a real jewel, right at the beach, decorated with hundreds of lamps along the roof, multiple terraces and all in all mundane, but in a charming way. Simone couldn’t have been happier.

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Driving down Highway 1 on the Pacific coast was incredible! Curvy roads, ups and downs, a fascinating landscape. We peaked sea elephants wrestling on the beach and making funny noises, took in the scenery at many vista points and made a quick stop in Santa Barbara.

The architectural highlight of the day was the Getty Villa in Malibu, a marble villa that the world’s richest man in the 1950s had himself built as an exact reproduction of a Roman Villa that was destroyed during the eruption of mount Vesuvius. Mr. Getty actually never got to live in the villa on a rock overlooking the Pacific, but it now houses his collection of Antique sculptures and furniture. It was really beautiful. A couple of Hollywood stars live probably next door in Malibu.

Now about our dwellings in the LA area; Venice Beach, to be precise. It was no Roman villa, but we slept in a room that was certainly no less original—the Robot Room, which locals Joe and Lisa rent out as an AirBnB in their home. Joe works in animation (he has an IMDb entry!) and the Robot Room was like a space devoted to robots, animation film and comics. He shared his fascinating insider knowledge about Hollywood and the area with us.

Venice, in fact, started out as the playground for a visionary with money (or a millionaire with visions) as well. As you can already guess by the name, it was in the early 20th century envisioned as a reproduction of Italy’s lagoon city, including a replica of San Marco, the arcades of the Palazzo Ducale, bridges and gondolas!

If you asked Simone prior to the trip to California what she was looking forward to in particular, you’d get one answer straight away: Rollerskating on the Venice Beach Boardwalk with disco music on headphones! Well, unfortunately, she didn’t get to do it (booo!) due to “strong” winds, so nobody would rent out rollerskates. But after a few moments of gnashing teeth, bikes were also deemed acceptable. We biked to the Santa Monica Pier, where we witnessed a beautiful sunset.

Instead of spending much time on the touristy Hollywood Boulevard, we took the scenic Mulholland Drive and enjoyed the views from Hollywood Bowl Overlook and Griffith Observatory. Downtown LA with its modern architecture is certainly also worth a visit.

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1. All 110 rooms of the Madonna Inn are themed and have unique designs. You can rest your head in the Matterhorn room, the Austrian Suite, the Caveman, the Floral Fancy, the Just Heaven or the Marguerite room (which we picked).
2. You can buy postcards of all rooms in the Madonna Inn.
3. When making a reservation, you can pick three room preferences and find out which room you get upon check-in.
4. Some of the rooms’ bathrooms feature a rock shower.
5. Other rooms have a waterfall!
6. Gentlemen urinate into a waterfall… in the restroom, where else?
7. The exterior looks like a building relocated straight from Disneyland.
8. The Madonna Inn’s Restaurant—a Steakhouse—is all pink.
9. The toilet seats are heated.
10. Speaking of toilet seats, they also offer the options “Rear Cleansing”, “Front Cleansing” and “Dryer”.

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