Great option for wine tour on San Francisco port stop

[Bruin Steve]

We just disembarked the Majestic Princess Coastal cruise last week (LA to Vancouver).

For our stop in San Francisco, we wanted to do a winery tour.  I took a look at the Wine Tour shore excursion offered by the cruise line--and noted that it got some very mediocre to poor reviews--comments mentioned only two wineries visited and not enough free time in Sonoma to do lunch on your own.  So, we started looking for alternative arrangements...and came upon "Edge of the World Tours".

 

Edge of the World Tours | Sonoma Wine Tours and Private Tours from San Francisco (edgeoftheworldsf.com)

 

Edge of the World offered the option of either booking your own private tour or taking a tour they managed.  With all the uncertainty with people canceling cruises during these pandemic times, we figured signing up to a tour they managed was a safer bet than trying to put together our own group.  Pricing came to about the same either way...and the cost slightly LESS than the Princess excursion.  And the group size was 12 persons--which works out WAY better than the 45-50 Princess would have crammed onto a big bus shore excursion.  I posted information on the tour on our Cruise Critic Roll Call and a number of others joined us in booking this.

 

On our tour, we had 12 of us...ten from the cruise Roll Call and another young honeymoon couple from the UK that the tour provider picked up at their hotel.

 

We had a small last-minute issue when Princess changed our port time in San Francisco just days before the cruise.  I contacted Edge of the World and they accommodated the change by moving back the pick-up time by 15 minutes.  

 

Our guide was Marc--one of the owners of the company--and he was EXCELLENT--very knowledgeable, very entertaining...everything you might want in a tour guide.

 

We headed across the Golden Gate to a brief photo stop just across on the Marin side of the bridge, then on to Sonoma.  We visited two small family-owned wineries in the morning--Mayo and Wellington, then a lunch break and free time in the charming town of Sonoma, followed by a visit to one more small winery--Homewood--in the afternoon, then free time in Sausalito before a return to the ship.

 

We had private appointment times at each winery and the hosts were all informative with interesting presentations followed by VERY ample samplings of several wines...The small group arrangements made it all so much better than the shorex would have been with 50 people crowding to a bar for meager samplings.

 

I HIGHLY recommend this tour for anyone with a port stop in San Francisco.

 

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Bruin Steve

[KeepCalmBearOn]

Heck, I'd have just walked to the Buena Vista Cafe and started ordering Mimosa's until noon and Guinness after that 😄

[CruiseCrabs]

On 5/23/2022 at 5:20 PM, scottca075 said:

Heck, I'd have just walked to the Buena Vista Cafe and started ordering Mimosa's until noon and Guinness after that 😄

The proper order is Irish Coffee, Mimosa, Guinness. How can you go to the alleged birthplace of the Irish Coffee and not have one?