Napa!!!

After leaving New York, I was lucky enough to take a trip out west to visit friends and family.  The first stop was Napa to meet my friend Tara!  Tara and I always seem to have the best time when we travel together and never come home without a few stories!  After my 12 hour trip to get to San Francisco.....yes, I said 12 hours.....130 mile/hour headwinds, weather in SF, a stop to refuel in Reno...I finally made it, we rented our car and off we went!  Should I skip over the part where I rented a "green" car?  This thing was like a space ship.  I think the best part was every time you put the car in reverse, the thing beeped at you - kind of like a mac truck would if they were backing up.  Weird.

The first stop was Larkmead.  It is a winery we had both went to before - they have delicious wines and the atmosphere is just so beautiful!  We sat by the fire and did a private tasting.  It was the perfect way to relax after the stressful trip out!

After our tasting, we checked into the Solage - this may be the best, most relaxing hotel on earth! and stayed in and had dinner there.  We decided to split the lucky pig and lucky it was.....it was amazing!  Im sad I don't have any pictures of the restaurant or the hotel.  Next time!

Friday morning, after some exercise and a delicious breakfast at the Solage, we ventured out to 3 wineries.  The first two stops were recommendations from our friends Jen and Dave.

O'Brien is a family run winery - they live on the property, write poetry on the back of their bottle and are friendly as can be.  Even on a rainy day, it was beautiful!  Not such a bad view to wake up to every morning!

View from winery

I just though this was a funny sculpture!

Our next stop was a place called Fleury.  This is also a family run winery, but the facilities much different.  They don't live on the property, they run tastings out of their warehouse, which sits in the middle of a vineyard.  I have to give credit to the woman who decorated the space - they did an amazing job!  We had one of the sons walk us through their wines, which were very tasty!

This was the room we did our tasting in.....they even gave pashminas because it was a tad chilly

They had these little areas outside, which must be great in the nice weather

Hmmmm, I wonder what this is?

The bathroom!  Can you imagine the creativity that went into this?

The last stop of the day was a place called Vincent Arroyo, a winery right by the hotel.  This is another family owned and fun winery.  We did our tasting with Vincent and had a wonderful time!  His wines are unique and lovely - unfortunately, you can only find them at his winery in Calistoga!

This is a deceiving list.....Vincent was pulling out all kinds of wine, not on this list!

That evening, we decided to stay in and eat at the hotel again.  When everything is so good, why venture out?

Saturday morning, after a spin class and another fabulous breakfast, we had a mission.  We were going to stop by Cuvaison, a winery Tara and I had been to together 7 years ago and the location of the first wine club we ever joined.  After that, we were heading to St Helena to ship the wine I had purchased to Bermuda and hers to Denver.

Cuvaison had made a lot of changes since the first time we were there, it was good to stop back in and see everything.

The guy who did our tasting was a little nutty and wanted to take a picture to look like we were on a roller coaster.  Successful?

The woman at O'Brien who told us about the company that ships to Bermuda also told us to stop into the tasting room, Tamber Bey, across the way.  We made it there in plenty of time and decided to go into the tasting room first in case we really enjoyed it and wanted to purchase more wine.  That was a good and bad decision!

The wines at Tamber Bey were delicious, in fact, we both joined the wine club!  The people were nice as can be and all seemed to be going well......

Happy Campers!

....until we went to leave, walked across the street only to find out the shipping place closed 10 minutes earlier!  I'm not lying.....we were sitting across the street, clueless as they come, as the only place in Napa Valley that ships wine to Bermuda closed!  You can imagine my reaction.....

Luckily, I remembered our container was still open (although finding someone to ship to New Jersey isn't the easiest task either), so we found another place, got all of our wines shipped to Denver and to Sea Ventures and were on our way to the airport, not without a big panic from me. Tara is a sport for dealing with me!

Happy to be at the airport, having a martini after all the stress :-)

We were off to our next adventure to visit Jen and Katie in Orange County!

Thanks for the fun trip T, its always the best when we have our getaways!!!