Motoring Wine Country and More

As I mentioned in my last post, we were able to get out of the city on a couple different days of our San Francisco vacation to explore the coast, Sonoma and Napa Valley wine country of California. While in Seattle, we also spent our final day exploring both north and south of the city.

This travel was made possible via day long car rentals from Zipcar. I learned of Zipcar from a friend in Washington DC and signed up over the summer in planning our west coast vacation. Zipcar offers a convenient hassle-free way to rent a car for as little as an hour in many large cities and on larger college campuses across the country. Besides not having to interact with annoying car rental counters, argue over insurance upgrades or pray the car I reserved is available - the best thing about Zipcar is that they rent MINI Coopers.

  

While Zipcar rents lots of models of cars and trucks, knowing I could reserve a MINI hardtop or convertible during our trip was perfect considering how much I love my own MINI Cooper S that I got last year. San Francisco and Seattle are both MINI Cooper country. While in San Francisco for a week, we rarely traveled more than a block without seeing multiple MINIs either driving by or parked. Zipcar offered dozens of them throughout the city as well as in Seattle.

We took advantage of Zipcar three times in San Francisco to rent wheels for trips up the coast to Santa Rosa, to Sonoma and Napa and an afternoon around town to hit spots we missed during our bike ride or use of public transit on other days. In Seattle, we rented a Zipcar to explore in and out of the city including Discovery Park, Volunteer Park, Alki Beach and the International District.

Our rentals includes two hardtop MINI Coopers, a Honda Civic and our favorite - a MINI Cooper convertible which we had during our first driving day to Muir Woods, Muir Beach, Stinson Beach, Point Reyes, Santa Rosa. Thanks to our Zipcars, we were able to see and do a lot more during our vacation.

**It was not my intention for this blog post to read like a commercial however if you are interested in joining Zipcar, check out their site and follow the Vrooom link or contact me for a referral to save yourself money off your first rental.