Sonoma Segway Tours

The Squirt: THE way to tour Sonoma
Prices: See Sonoma Segway’s website

On our recent trip to Sonoma, CA, we had the opportunity to take a unique wine tasting tour of Sonoma…on Segways!!!  We hope you enjoy the above video we made, but please continue reading to find out all about the experience!

If you aren’t familiar with Segways, you may have seen them in your local shopping mall.  They are being used more and more by mall security, and were even featured in the 2009 movie “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” Lol!

While waiting to speak to our hotel concierge, we noticed a brochure for Sonoma Segway Tours, and we were immediately intrigued!  We asked about the tour, and the concierge hadn’t tried it yet, but she called for us to find out more details.  It was scheduled to be a 3 hour tour, and it was very reasonable, only $99 per person, so she set it all up for us!

We met our super friendly tour guide, Hunt, in a parking lot behind the downtown square in Sonoma.  Hunt arrived and took out a few Segways from his van and we filled out all the required paperwork, while Hunt got everything ready for our training session. It turned out that we were the only two on the tour, se we really felt like we had the royal treatment from Hunt all day!

For about 20 minutes, we practiced in the quiet parking lot. The Segway has only two wheels and a lot of internal gyroscopes to keep you balanced, so the first lesson was actually getting on the Segway! One foot at a time, without leaning was the only way to do it  Once we mastered that, we were ready to start moving.

Hunt kept the Segways in “training mode”, so they wouldn’t accelerate too much as we learned. Making the Segway move is very intuitive. Lean slightly forward to move forward.  The more you lean, the faster you go!  Likewise, lean back slightly to slow down.  Turning left or right, was a simple lean or shift.  Hunt said it was just like how you would turn if you were skiing, but since we have never been skiing, we’ll have to take his word.

After twenty minutes or so of practice, we were ready to go!  Hunt set the Segways to “regular mode”, and we were off. The Segways are allowed on the bike/walking paths as well as on the less busy local streets.  First stop was General Vallejo’s home.  Hunt explained a lot of the history of Sonoma, and took our picture, on the Segways.

Roy & Ren at General Vallejo's Home

Since it was just the two of us on the tour, Hunt was able to get us to two wineries for some wine tastings!  So we were off to our first one.  After a nice drive through the bike path, we headed out to the quiet local roads, through the many picturesque vineyards of Sonoma!  We arrived at the oldest winery in Sonoma, the Buena Vista Winery. After some more history from Hunt, and some delicious tastings, we picked up a bottle of wine to take with us, and we were off for some more riding. Let’s just say that any nervousness or hesitation we had on the Segway was completely gone. We were driving like experts now!

Sonoma Grapes

On our beautiful ride to the Bartholomew Park Winery, Hunt even filmed us for a bit. (See video above.) Hunt had more great stories to tell here, and then he waited while we sampled a few of their wines. This time we ordered some to be shipped home, and took a quick look in their museum.

Now you would think that was a full tour, but we had one more stop!  Hunt took us to the Vella Cheese Company. Not only did we have special parking there, but Hunt was able to take us behind the scenes to see where fresh cheese is made, and even out to the storage units where the cheese was aging. Man, it smelled yummy in there!  Then we went into the main building, where they had a huge assortment of soft & hard cheeses and bleu cheeses for us to try! We purchased some of our favorites including smokey bleu & Vella cheese with Pesto!

Vella Cheese Sampler

Roy & Ren & LOTSA Cheese!

Well, we really had an amazing time, and our three hour tour ended up being more like 5 hours, and we weren’t ready for it to be over even then!  We selected our complimentary bottle of wine (included in the price of the tour) which was another excellent value!  We really appreciated Hunt taking the time to make the tour extra special. He has so much knowledge of the area, and was so kind, it felt like a long-time friend taking us around town for the afternoon. While chatting with Hunt during our day, we found out that he is also the manager at a local restaurant, Murphy’s Irish Pub. That night was Barbequed Oysters night, which you can read about in our review and on PickleBubble!

Segway Parking Only!

For more on Sonoma Segway Tours, check out their website:
http://sonomasegway.com/

Be sure when you take your Sonoma Segway Tour in Sonoma, CA, that you say that you were referred to them by Roy and Ren from twosquirts.com.