Road Trip Part X - Paso Robles, Day 3 & 4

After another great breakfast (this time it was croissant french toast and bacon), we spent spent most of our last full day of the trip at Hearst Castle in Cambria, which was a short 30 minute drive from the inn. We stopped by Medusa, a mexican restaurant in downtown Cambria, for a quick lunch before heading to the Castle. As I was a first time visitor, we took the recommendation of the Hearst Castle website and chose tour #1, which included tickets to the IMAX-type movie that depicts Hearst's life and the building of the castle. The tour itself was informative, and the grounds and buildings were beautiful. It was a very enjoyable way to spend the afternoon, and I'd recommend doing one of the tours if you are ever in the area.

We spent our last wine and appetizer hour with Diane and Jim, getting to know them better. I'm definitely envious of their life! After the sun set, we headed to dinner at Villa Creek (owned by the same people who own the Villa Creek winery we visited the day before). The place was packed and the service suffered because of it, but the quality of the food made up for the slow service. We started with a yummy corn soup, I had the veal stew with mashed potatoes (a special) and Steve tried the quail. I thought mine was better, but both were very tasty. For dessert, we shared a huge serving of peach pie a la mode. We enjoyed dinner with a Villa Creek wine, the 2006 Willow. This dinner was $150 with tip.

We enjoyed another restful night's sleep with the fireplace on this time (it was finally cool enough to use it) and then sat down for our last breakfast of the trip. And what a breakfast it was. Diane made this AMAZING quiche with sausage, leeks and cheese, which she served with fruit. Steve still talks about that breakfast. I think I may need to ask Diane for the recipe.


We took several trips to the car to load up our luggage and the massive amount of wine we bought and made it over to our reservation for a tasting at Torrin. Torrin rents space at Booker Winery, which is where we had our tasting. Scott, the owner/winemaker, was in the middle of harvest, so we got spend about an hour witnessing most stages of the winemaking process up close and personal (we tried grapes that had been picked the day before, saw the just crushed grapes, saw them punching down other vats of grapes that were farther along in the process, etc.) Our visit with Scott ended with a tasting of two of his wines (we bought two bottles of each).

We hit the road, and an hour later, a quick stop at Patrick's Side Street Cafe in Los Olivos for lunch was in order, after which I resisted the temptation to do more wine tasting (which if you've been to Los Olivos, you know how hard this is since the tasting rooms line both sides of the street in that small town). We then drove the rest of the 2 hours home happy and full.