Your other options are tour-oriented, and there’s no shortage of companies or individuals to hire for transportation from several Bay Area locations to your chosen destination. We’ve linked to the SMART stations map in the Sonoma County Resources section below.

To connect to SMART from San Francisco, you would take a ferry to the Larkspur Ferry Terminal. It currently serves stations in the Sonoma County Airport area, Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park, Cotati, Petaluma, Novato, San Rafael, and Larkspur, and an extension to Windsor is expected to open sometime in 2021. You can also cobble together a car-free Sonoma County option with the help of the new-ish Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) passenger rail system. There are quite a few options available (see the Info Chart linked in the Napa County Resources section below), and along with eating, shopping and general sightseeing there’s probably more than enough to fill a weekend. You could also choose to just visit tasting rooms in downtown Napa. If you’re looking for something really unique, though, how about these Napa winery tours options - in a tuk-tuk (an auto rickshaw) or a luxurious classic 1947 Packard convertible limousine? (Click on the link for info!) (We recommend you look into Wanderu for researching/booking that travel.) Once Amtrak delivers you to Napa’s Soscol Gateway Transit Center, you can either rely on Uber/Lyft to transport you to and from the wineries you want to visit. First, there’s an Amtrak train that runs from Emeryville, which is easily reached from San Francisco via BART or bus. If you’d prefer to avoid the expense of renting a car and the hassle of driving, there are other options for visiting Napa from San Francisco. Many wineries open early (around 10am), and you may want to plan on an early start. As you can see from the Google map renderings included here, in slightly more than an hour you can be in either the Napa or Sonoma.ĭo be advised, though, that weekend traffic can easily double that drive time. It’s (usually) not an arduous drive from San Francisco, though. At the time of this writing, STS offers nonstop flights on Alaska Airlines to Seattle (SEA), Portland (PDX), Los Angeles (LAX), Orange County (SNA), and San Diego (SAN) and on American Airlines to Phoenix (PHX), Dallas (DFW) and Los Angeles (LAX).Īdditionally, as of April 2021, a brand-new airline, Avelo, will begin to serve Los Angeles area travelers with a flight to STS from Burbank airport (BUR), and Alaska Airlines recently announced a competing BUR-to-STS flight beginning June 1, 2021. Schultz Sonoma County airport in Santa Rosa (STS). A much-better airfare might make that worth your while, however.Īlternatively, travelers whose final destination is Wine Country may want to look into flying into the Charles M. Sacramento International Airport (SMF) is yet another option for flight cost comparisons, but drive time to Wine Country from either the Sacramento or San Jose airport is roughly double that from San Francisco or Oakland. Many Napa-Sonoma Wine Country visitors either combine their visit to the area with a trip to San Francisco, while others fly into a Bay Area airport (SFO, OAK, SJC - San Francisco, Oakland or San Jose) for the express purpose of continuing on with ground travel to a final destination in Wine Country. Keep in mind, too, that even the sky’s not the limit in Wine Country because you can also take a hot air balloon ride to soak in the beauty from above! Getting To and Around Wine Country That said, though, there are definitely some not-so-simple things to enjoy here, like wineries with incredible, multi-million-dollar architecture and art collections.

It’s true, you know, that the simplest pleasures are sometimes the most rewarding. This simple California Wine Country map will introduce and orient you to the area and, it’s hoped, help you make the most of your Wine Country visit.įront and center on most visitors’ to do list are the area’s wineries, but we encourage you to also think of the entire countryside - the roads in between the various towns and their local wineries - as one gigantic attraction.Ĭonsider picking up a picnic or renting a bike and drinking in the surrounding beauty - along with drinking some delicious wine. Compared with other California areas, Napa and Sonoma Counties may be a bit light on typical tourist attractions like amusement parks or museums, but they definitely offer oenological, culinary, artistic and natural delights to stimulate your senses and soothe your soul.

Napa wine maps