Looking for transportation recommendations for an already-planned Napa day trip to/from Sacramento.
The available options seem to be Dryver ($33/hr, but need to provide your own car), or limo/town car services.
Limos/town cars are expensive (>$1k): we don’t need a limousine, a driver dressed in a suit, or free water bottles. Our transportation needs are much more utilitarian: a (ideally-clean) mini-van would be perfectly adequate.
The next logical step seems to be posting on craigslist/nextdoor, but I just thought I’d start with the WB hivemind first just in case.
slight thread drift - sorry Noah…
Anyone know a good service for local transport? I’ll have a car so they can drive us in a provided car versus using their own car. We will be in Napa for a few days and Windsor another few days so not sure if we need the same service or different companies based on the 2 different regions.
Yes once actually in the valley, and it’s spotty and unreliable, and availability depends in part on time of year. We made it work on one of the days where we were pushing through some tastings, but it was not seamless and we had some close calls on appointment timing. That was 4 years ago. May be better? It was WAY cheaper than a car service though.
One consideration abut using UBER (serially, I imagine) is needing to load/unload any purchases at each stop. If you have a driver wait for you, the charges will continue to mount similar to a taxi. The distance between Santa Rosa (between Healdsburg and Sonoma for averages) and Napa is essentially an hour. Ideally you would want to schedule them on separate days. $33 / hr. is presuming they just drive to where you want to go and nothing else? That is bare bones.
If you decide to rent a car and have someone drive it, just make sure they are insured to do so. There are a lot of companies in Napa that say they are insured to drive rental cars but they aren’t. They book your visit, show up in the morning to start your winery day and have conveniently forgotten to bring their insurance paperwork with them Get a copy in advance.
If you need someone to drive your vehicle, try calling Cheryl Roberts at Designated Driver Napa/Sonoma. Tell her we recommended her. https://www.ddnapasonoma.com/
I would not rely on Uber - once you get north of Napa toward the Yountville border, Uber service is spotty at best if you leave the valley floor.
I would do as others have said - rent a car yourself. Split tastings (and spit) so you aren’t consuming as much. Also tasting appointments run 60-90 minutes now so you won’t be visiting that many wineries if it is just a day visit.
We used We Drive when we were there last September and were very happy with them. You had to provide your own vehicle, but if you were able to pay cash, the hourly rate was significantly discounted. I think we paid either $35 or $40/hr with a 6 hour minimum.
I’d highly recommend against Uber. Cell service is very spotty and if you get stuck, it will throw off your entire day. We were trying to visit between 3 and 4 places to day, so the itinerary was quite packed. If you have more flexibility, perhaps less of an issue, but I still wouldn’t want to risk it.
We did in Oct 2019 and had no issues. Had to wait a bit for them to find Stony Hill on Spring Mtn but other than it was pretty seemless. I’m sure we’ll use them when we go back. I didn’t the prior trip but in the future would discuss private hire with a driver that we were comfortable with.