Monday, October 23, 2006

honeymoon

The honeymoon was absolutely wonderful... and I'm having a little trouble switching back to work mode. So here's a rundown!

We arrived on Saturday night, and settled into our hotel. We had grabbed some brouchures and started looking at what we wanted to do. Sunday we picked our first winery, Rutherford Hill, and went on a tasting and tour. It was beautiful and the wine was delicious. I discovered a new love... Port! Mmm. Since we had time to kill between when we finished our tasting and when we started our tour, we asked some of the locals what they suggested and they sent us to a wonderful store that we never would have found on our own. Olive oils, mustards, dressings, balsamic vinegars... and you got to taste everything! Two trips around the store, and we didn't need lunch! We did pick up a bottle of delicious parmasaen and garlic infused olive oil.

Monday we went on a limo tour, and were taken to 5 wineries. First was Andretti Winery (yup, Mario Andretti), then Cosentino Winery, and then to V.Sattui (http://www.vsattui.com/). V.Sattui was one of our favorites... they purposely timed it over lunch so that we could take advantage of their store with meats, breads, and dozens of types of cheese! It was amazing, and after a great lunch and tasting, we ended up buying 4 bottles of wine there and a Port! In the afternoon we continued on to Merryvale (with their beautiful cask room) and the Miner Family Winery. It was an amazing day.

Tuesday we took it easy. We drove around downtown Napa a bit, and to kill time before heading to our sushi dinner, we headed to two wineries: Renold's Family and Luna.

Wednesday we started off early and headed into San Francisco! What a great city! We drove across the bridge, visited Alcatraz, walked along the water front and checked out Pier 39. Travis' uncle then met up with us to lead us up some (humongous) stairs and show us Telegraph Hill, and gave us great views of Russian Hill and the waterfront before taking us to the Mission for dinner at a cute Italian place.

Thursday was our last day to tour around, so we headed to Sonoma, which we hadn't really checked out. It is a neat little artistic and historic town, and we walked around checking out the old mission and some of the other historic buildings. We then did a tasting at the Castle Winery tasting room... where we sampled about 15 wines!! We also got 4 bottles of wine there, and I got a gorgeous pair of earrings by a local artist. Next we checked out some shops and ate a leasurely meal at the Sunflower Cafe, before heading to the hotel.

Friday we got up early, ate breakfast and packed the last of our stuff. It was time to head to the airport. It was quite the adventure getting home (plane pushed up, then delayed making us rush to our connection, which was then delayed!)... but we, along with our 7 bottles of wine (we bought about 9 or 10, but only 7 made it through the week!), made it in one piece. It was an amazing time, and I recommend it to anyone!

Jim, I heard that you and Chris also went to the Napa area... what did you think?

2 Comments:

Blogger Jimmy said...

Wow Meegs - you guys certainly made the most of your trip to Napa. That's great. We loved it as well but our trip was just a travel in - spend a day - travel out excursion. We are definately going to go back and spend a bit more time some day soon. Glad you had a good time.

5:52 PM  
Blogger Maggie said...

Sounds like an awesome trip. I loved San Fran when I was out there, but never made it to Sonoma/Napa - hope to get there sometime. In the meantime, I will look for Castle wine next time I shop :-)

8:38 AM  

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