We spent a day exploring Sonoma on our Californian Road Trip. This quaint city is situated in Sonoma Valley, which runs parallel to Napa Valley, forming California’s Wine Country. As well as some wine tasting, we also visited the Jelly Belly Factory in nearby Fairfield.
How to get to Sonoma
Sonoma is located 45 miles north of San Francisco, a straightforward drive mainly up the US-101. If you have a car, the journey can be done in an hour (allow extra time to stop at Golden Gate Bridge). It is reachable by public transport, but would require several buses and take 4 hours.
Getting around Sonoma
The area around Sonoma Plaza is best explored on foot. The rest of my itinerary really needs a car, with the other attractions we visited being several miles apart.
Sonoma in 1 Day Itinerary
| Day 1 | Drive to Sonoma Cornerstone Sonoma Sonoma Plaza Sebastiani Theatre Sonoma State Historic Park Windows XP Bliss Hill Sonoma Harvest Jelly Belly Factory Tour Dinner at Texas Roadhouse |
Drive to Sonoma
In the morning, we set off to drive the 50 miles from San Francisco to Sonoma, stopping en route at the Golden Gate Bridge viewpoint. I think I would have to live in San Francisco for a very long time before I could drive across the Bridge without stopping at the viewpoint to admire the view and for the obligatory bridge photo op.
Cornerstone Sonoma
We continue to Cornerstone Sonoma, on the outskirts of Sonoma. This interesting little place, which is free to visit. The gardens consist of ten gallery gardens and five culinary gardens. You can stroll around and enjoy the juxtaposition of art and nature, all with the backdrop of the beautiful Sonoma Valley and its vineyards.
There are also shops, a restaurant and wine tasting rooms here.
Sonoma Plaza
Next, we drive on to Sonoma Plaza for a wander round the historic plaza and some lunch. It’s an interesting little town set around a central park, lined with colonial era buildings.
Sebastiani Theatre
The pink and green Art Deco style Sebastiani Theatre was built in 1933 and is still functioning as a theatre.
Sonoma State Historic Park
Sonoma State Historic Park consists of six sites around downtown Sonoma. At the northern end of Sonoma Plaza is the Mission San Francisco Solano, which was built in 1824. It is northernmost Franciscan Mission in California and the last one to be built.
Next door are the Sonoma Barracks, birthplace of the California State Bear Flag. Here, in 1846, American settlers declared an independent Californian Republic with a homemade flag featuring a bear.
Sonoma State Historic Park is open daily from 10 am until 5 pm. Entry costs $3 for adults and $2 for children over 5.
Windows XP Bliss Hill
As you drive along the CA-12, look out for Windows XP Bliss Hill, the iconic green hill is familiar to many as a Windows screensaver. We managed to miss it!
Sonoma Harvest
Next, we head west towards Fairfield. There are plenty of wineries to visit around the Sonoma Valley, but he have opted for something a little different. Sonoma Harvest produces not only wine, but also gourmet olive oil, vinegars and other products.
We purchase a couple of glasses of wine to drink while we do an olive oil tasting. The tasting consists of five different olive oils (all manufactured on site) and 5 balsamic vinegars for us to dip our little tubs of croutons into. The oils are good but the vinegars are amazing. Once we have finished, I can’t resist buying what is going to be a very well travelled bottle of sriracha and mango balsamic vinegar.
The tasting rooms are usually open from Wednesday to Sunday between 10 am and 4 pm. They offer complimentary tastings of almost all of their products.
Jelly Belly Factory Tour
Next on the itinerary is the Jelly Belly Factory for a tour. Technically, this is in Fairfield, rather than Sonoma. But the two cities are only 26 miles apart, so this fits nicely into our itinerary. The tour costs $8 and we did wonder, as none of us are really jelly bean fans, if it is worth it. Nevertheless, we purchase tickets, don the compulsory jelly bean hats and set forth on our self-guided tour.
Apart from observing the manufacturing process, which is actually fascinating, there are also interactive candy related games to play, including a huge game of candy crush and a football style game. The kids have a go and manage to top the leaderboard, which they are surprisingly excited about!
There is a fun smelling section where you have to guess the jelly bean flavours. But my favourite is the art. There are portraits hanging along the tour route, and at the end is an art gallery. This contains some classics, such as the Mona Lisa and the Girl with the Pearl Earring made from jelly beans. I loved the idea of the austere American Gothic made from sweets.
We actually really enjoyed our tour, in fact it was probably our favourite experience of today’s varied itinerary. If you’re in the area, I thoroughly recommend it.
The factory is usually open daily from 9.15 am until 4pm. A self-guided tour costs $8.
Full to the top with jelly beans, we drive to tonight’s accommodation; the Surestay Hotel by Best Western Fairfield Napa Valley, which is situated right next to the Interstate and next door to Texas Roadhouse. It’s a typical roadside motel. The rooms are a little tired and everything smells of exhaust fumes and cooked meat, but it is clean and has everything we need for an overnight stay. After checking in, the kids go shopping while I take a rest. I receive a call from reception to ask if the room is OK? I say ‘Yes, thank you’. She seems genuinely surprised. The kids return with a selection of locally produced wine and some snacks for our own budget style Sonoma wine tasting experience.
Perhaps not surprisingly, this motel has closed down since our visit.
Dinner at Texas Roadhouse
After a couple of bottles of very nice wine, we head across the car park to Texas Roadhouse for an all American dining experience. We (I) can’t resist telling our waitress it’s daughter No 2’s birthday.
As a vegetarian, a steakhouse isn’t the obvious choice. There are no vegetarian mains, so daughter No 2 and I order three starters between us. We ask for them to serve these at the same time as the main course. This confuses the kitchen staff completely. Our starters arrive immediately. We are starving after a long day’s travel (and plenty of wine). We tuck in, despite the fact that the ‘vegetarian’ cheesy fries came with a generous topping of bacon. When the main courses are served, our three selected starters appear once again. Despite sending some of the accidental extras back, there is a lot of food and we end up totally stuffed and clutching a very full doggy bag. Cold cheesy fries for breakfast all round!
Before we depart, daughter No 2 gets to celebrate her birthday Texas style; a saddle is brought to the table and she must sit on it and shout ‘yee haw‘ with the entire restaurant watching. This ritual humiliation earns her a free bowl of ice cream, which she is too full to eat. It ends up in the freezer in our room to add to tomorrow’s gourmet breakfast extravaganza.
I hope you found the above information useful. For guides to more destinations in the 50+ countries we have visited, check out my full list of Independent Travel Itineraries here.
- Trip taken: March 2022
- Updated: September 2026
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