This is Wine Country
Trip Start
Aug 18, 2010
1
3
7
Trip End
Aug 26, 2010
Napa, California
Friday, August 20, 2010
We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge or as Lauren stated "The most photographed bridge in the world or some shit." As soon as we crossed the bridge it was goodbye fog and sunny skies. Sonoma is very pretty; a lot of rolling hills with dry grass and of course, vineyards. Today was the perfect day to be outside! Hot, sunny, and breezy. The first place we stopped at was in Sonoma, called Vinansa. We did the wine tasting for $5, looked around the store for a while, took pictures of the nice view and moved on to the next place. Larson Family Vineyard was stop #2. Lauren had been there a month before with her sisters, and the girl at the counter recognized her. So that must mean she's a regular at the winery. We did another wine flight here and got some bonus pours in there. We bought a bottle to have our feast with. I actually picked a red wine, which is very rare. Pinot Noir. We ate at the picnic table outside and had our wine, baguette, sharp cheddar, herbed goat cheese, nectarines, apples, hummus...so on and so forth. This place had a much less pretentious feel than the previous one. The decor was more country western and there were DOGS. 3 labs in 3 different colors, which (of course) I love.
After this stop we went to Napa and a very modern and more expensive winery; Artesa. The tasting was $10- Lauren and I split this one because we were already pretty full from the giant meal we had. There's only so much wine I can drink in one day and the 3rd place was the limit. I don't know how people manage to do like 10 wineries in a day. Yucky.
The fine establishment that Lauren booked was only a few miles away- only 1 mile from the heart of downtown Napa! Wine Valley Lodge. The lady at the desk seemed pretty convinced that we were planning on getting wasted immediately and kept saying we should just get shuttle instead of "Drinking and driving; I don't know how else to say that. Tasting and driving??" "Downtown is only about a mile away. You guys should just walk and get a taxi back if you're too wasted!" "The legal limit in the state is .08...just sayin." "The downtown has cameras all over, so you better be careful driving around." There were actually more things said in reference to drinking and/or driving, but I just couldn't memorize them all.
Instead of drinking and driving, we laid out at the pool until it was too cold to stay out there. We took a few hours to decide where to eat. We didn't actually decide on anything except the fact that we would be walking downtown. It got chilly in a hurry. We decided on Sushi Mambo. I got my usual sushi that contained tempura but it's healthy because no mayo-based sauce was involved. Tomorrow is the Lake Tahoe excursion. Must sleep.
