Every now and again a city girl like myself needs to get away from the city streets. Especially when in Los Angeles. You do have to pick carefully, however, because you dont want to end up in a suburban enclave just like Los Angeles. ‘Cause what’s the point in that? And, yes I note that the city of LA is a suburb.  Besides downtown LA and Hollywood, the majority of the city looks like a series of little suburbias.

En route to and while there, we must have heard Guns ‘n Roses and Metallica about 20 times. Luckily, I enjoy Guns ‘n Roses.  I wish that they had managed to work out their differences and stay together as a band. But what do you do?  Back to my weekend getaway.

I needed to get away but didn’t have time to go super far.  Luckily for me, California does have a plethora of quaint towns that oen can get away to for two or less days.   One such town is Temecula. It is a southern California wine country town.  It has an interesting history and was incorporated in 1859.

I won’t lie. Part of what made it interesting is that it has many wineries. And many of the restaurants have craft cocktails-a favorite of mine!  I went to a restaurant called Sorrel that had a great vibe, waiter and rum cocktails. Win, win, win! They also had these fabulous fries with chorizo in gravy, They were truly divine.

Let me talk about the wineries in general. They are way more relaxed and chill than the wineries up noth in Sonoma and Napa valleys.  You can show up to a winery in Temecula and pull up a lawn chair and just sun away with your kid. I didn’t feel rushed or crowded the way I have in Napa valley.  They also had pineapple wines which was new to me.

We went to Lake Skinner which was a complete surprise to us as we hadn’t done our homework before heading down.   Why was it a surprise? It was beautiful, serene and full of possible activities. You can go boating, hike or splash in their splash zone for kids. My son was so happy at being able to run through fountains of water. It really doesn’t take much to make him happy and this was high on the happiness scale.

Temecula also has a very quaint old town section with great restaurants, shops and decor. We ate at a restaurant called 1909 and had great bacon there.

Overall, Temecula is a cute town for the whole family. You can have some wine, you can splash around and you can eat well.