San Diego wine train tour

We came in early for business meetings, but they got canceled. I wanted to do something. Did some research on the Internet, and found the San Diego Wine Train Tour. Let's start with the bottom line; we had fun. That said, they are incredibly disorganized, their tour web site is awfully vague.

However, Diane managed to figure it all out. We took a cab to the downtown San Diego Santa Fe train station/transportation center. We needed to buy tickets on the Coaster to go to Carlsbad. We were there early, so we decided to get a light lunch at Grand Central Cafe. I liked the place, it is not gourmet, but the prices are fair, the food is good and they are not pretentious. I would eat there again. Diane had the German Potato Soup, Kathy had the Grand Spud and I had the Grilled Fish Tacos. Food was good, price before gratuity including tax was 23.11.

The first stop on the tour was a walk to Fresco Trattoria, where you have a "3 course meal" and a wine tasting. The first two wines were supermarket type wines a Pino Grigo and a Davinci Chianti, I didn't recognize the third and didn't write it down. One suggestion to the wine tour is make it easy to track what you taste.

First stop was Witch Creek winery. They are putting an amazing mural on the wall BTW. We went through the pours; our favorite was Kathy's Cuvee ( cuvee seems to mean something different to every winery and I didn't ask). David bought a bottle and we each had a glass on the train as we headed South to Solano Beach.

Our next stop was Carruth Cellars, an urban winery ( they make the wine from grapes they source from growers. We had a tasting of mostly Barbera's and purchased a bottle of their 2010.

Our last stop was in Old Town at Hacienda de las Rosas. This was the least interesting of the pours. By now it was 7 P.M. and food sounded like a good idea. The oldest restaurant in Old Town is La Pinata and I once hosted a party there, so we gave it a try and they still have great food in huge portions. Diane had the Guacamole Enchiladas, Kathy had the Shrimp Enchiladas and I had the Carne Asada Dinner. Price before gratuity was 39.50. Then we took a taxi back to the Hyatt and went to sleep.