at Sonoma Coast Villa Inn & Spa

Reviews

VIA
January/February 1999
Do you take your massage with salt, or without? Guests at the utterly romantic hideaway, Sonoma Coast Villa, swear by the body salt scrubs and the salt scrub body polish. For more oneness with the nearby ocean, try a seaweed mud body mask. Or, to fight nature, try the age-defying treatment. Before each, you get to soak your tootsies in a Mediterranean foot bath (sprinkled with rose petals), given in the spa garden. The entire inn could be a tiny outpost of Italy, all terra-cotta with gardens winding through the grounds.

Allure
August 2000
No ravages of age or civilization are permitted at the Sonoma Coast Villa Inn. The 12 guest rooms come with private patios, fireplaces, Jacuzzis, fresh fruit, and local Sonoma wines...but nary a telephone or modem hookup. A walk under the columned veranda and through the terraced gardens led us to the Courtyard Spa, where the massage therapist seated us in a soft chair, dra ped our neck with a heated wrap stuffed with buckwheat and flax, and lifted our feet into a bowl of warm water, oils, and flower petals.

San Francisco - Top Fifty B&Bs
May 1999
Once a splashy weekend hideout for the owners of the Blue Boar Restaurant, the terra-cotta villa looks like a slice of Tuscany misplaced in the rustic California countryside. Once inside, though, you can't help but be thankful for the shimmering pool, subtle tile work, and pampering service. Ask for one of the new rooms, which have wood-burning fireplaces and neck-deep whirlpool tubs.

Sky West
Spring 2000
Innkeepers Susan and Cyrus Griffin, take a hands off approach in welcoming you to a secluded country estate with terraced gardens, a lovely courtyard, and elegant guest rooms with wood burning fireplaces and lots of special touches. The Sonoma Coast Villa spa {available only for guests) is definitely hands on -with wonderful, highly-specialized personal service and unique treatments including massage, facials, salt scrubs {including hand and foot massage), herbal wraps, mud masks, and the Villa Total Spa Therapy {a 2-hour treat- ment catered to your special needs).

Diablo
December 1998
Then again, upon check in at the Sonoma Coast Villa, it's common for people to throw their activity packed agendas out the window. Nestling in, staying put, is just too inviting. Hidden in a stand of trees five miles east of Bodega Bay, the villa seems a little outpost of Italy-except for the cool wind and the cows dotting the dry California hills. Around the terra cotta and columned villa, gardens brim with an impressive gathering of birches, beeches, century plants, mulberries, eucalyptus, and bursts of bright flowers everywhere. An expansive lawn invites picnicking. A tiny swimming pool awaits visitors who come on a hot day. (Vittorio De Sica's Garden of the Finzi Continis comes to mind. ) A nine hole putting green challenges the golf swing. Guests move through the property so peacefully, so quietly, that solitude seems to be catching, and the silence is filled only with the rustling eucalyptus leaves far overhead or the occasional bawl of a lonely cow.