Josh and I decided we wanted to take a trip after his graduation before he started his new job. We have always wanted to go to Napa and do the whole wine counrty thing. A lot of our friends have been there and told us how beautiful it was so we thought this was the best time to go. We decided we were going to do two days in Napa and two in San Fransisco (which I'd never been). My mother said she'd watch the boys as a graduation gift to Josh (she's seriously a saint).
We flew into San Fransisco and drove up the coast to Napa. I actually didn't see most of it because I was passed out in the passenger seat (it had been a long night with the boys). I did however wake up just in time to see the start of the vineyards. It was breathtaking. We got settled into our hotel and and walked to downtown Napa. We weren't really sure what to do since most of our activities were the next day. We hit up a really cute market called
Oxbow Public Market. It's an indoor marketplace with all kinds of unique restaurants, butchers, cupcake makers, coffee houses and gift stores all from around the Bay Area.
We then did a couple of wine tastings and ended up at
Vermeil Wines. I don't know a lot of NFL football coaches but the owner of this tasting room was Dick Vermeil. What was cool about it was he had the Vince Lombardi trophy there and they let us hold it and take pictures with it. Josh was pretty stoked. I guess it was from 2000 when the St. Louis Rams won the Superbowl.
After doing a few more tastings we got ready and went to dinner at
Lucy in Yountville. It was so good and the hotel that it was attached to was stunning. It was called the
Bardessono and it's where I want to stay next time we go back. (right honey?... I'm sure he's rolling his eyes as he's reading this).
The next morning we woke up at the butt crack of dawn to catch a shuttle so we could ride a hot air balloon that flew over the vineyards. We knew things we about to go downhill because everything that could possibly go wrong did. We were suppose to meet in the lobby at our hotel at 5:00 am (which we did). But ended waiting for another couple for a half hour. When we got to the balloon take off sight there were suppose to be coffee and pastries. Since we got there so late there was barely anything left. We were then informed that the weather conditions were less then favorable so they wanted to drive us 45 miles out and try to take off there. I must have still been in a state of comatose because if I had heard this we would have canceled immediately. So to make a long story short we drove the 45 miles just to turn back around because it was too foggy there as well. It was a really bummer because that was one of the things I was most looking forward to the most. Then to top it all off we came back to our hotel to have our pool out of order because of a broken pipe.
I went and hid in our room... but not for to long because we had a tour bus picking us up in a hour to do wine tours. I had already felt the day should have be over because we did so much already, but it was only 9:00 am.
We went through
Platypus Wine Tours to take us to the wineries around the Napa Valley area. We ended up going to four. The first one was called
GodSpeed Winery and it was way up on the hillside away from all the huge popular wineries that everyone knew of. It was beautiful. We also had the perfect weather while we were.
The next stop was
Grgich Hills. This one was neat because we got to go inside and see all the oak barrels where the wines are stored and still developing. We even got to have lunch out on the patio in the vineyard. Pretty amazing.
Next was David Fulton Winery and that was just okay. They didn't have anything that stood out and their wine was nothing special.
The last winery we went was
Rutherford Hill. By this time I was dragging a bit. I'm assuming it was because A. I got up at 4:30 am or B. It was 95 degrees in the shade and we were on our fourth wine tasting. I like this one the best because they had chocolate pairing with the wines (it was very good chocolate).
We got back to our hotel and I crashed on my face before dinner. Josh was determined not to let his buzz die so he hit the Oxbow market again and made some new friends. We ended up grabbing dinner at an Italian place and then came back to our hotel and went to sleep (I'd say Josh more liked passed out but hey we're on vacation). So that was Napa trip. Onto San Fran!
