Day 1 in Wine Country

After weeks of planning, I am finally in Wine Country! Last night, we arrived in San Francisco from Honolulu sometime after 9 p.m. Before I get to the important stuff, I have to say that our experience with the people at Enterprise Car Rental was wonderful! How many people can say they had a "great" experience with a rental car agency??? They were quick, efficient, friendly, and overall just made us feel like valued customers. Let's hope we have a similar experience with the Enterprise folks in Vegas.

After getting the car and getting slightly lost, we drove to the Doubletree Hotel in Burlingame, just a few miles away from the airport. I got this hotel on Priceline. While there was nothing wrong with the hotel, other than the parking situation which was not-so-good, my general impression was just, "eehhhh." I wouldn't mind staying there again if I got a good rate on Priceline, but I wouldn't go out of my way to specifically book it.

Today was a good day. We drove up to Napa, which took just over one hour. We're staying at the Napa River Inn, which I LOVE! This is a picture of the superior room I booked. It's located in the Plaza Building, and has a balcony overlooking the Napa River (the river really isn't that great, but it's still cool to have a balcony) and a fireplace that turns on with the turn of a dial. I'm really looking forward to the breakfast that is included. We received cards that we checked off to indicate what we wanted, and they will deliver it to our room in the morning! How cool is that???

After checking into the hotel, we went to COPIA. I must admit that at first, I was thinking, "this isn't worth my time." But, the more time we spent there, the more I enjoyed myself. I had to remind myself that it is a museum -- there was a lot of art around, and while I enjoy art, I would prefer that it be created by different people. There was one room with LOTS of paintings done by one artist, and they all were based on the same subject...vineyards. And it got old pretty fast. A lot of the paintings really looked a lot alike.

Things got better when we reached a room that contained historical objects. My favorite was a display describing how vineyards got around prohibition. There were a few legal uses for wine, including for churches and for "medicinal" purposes. I also really enjoyed a section devoted to food. Part of this exhibit explained the diets of different cultures, and their food budget for a week. Another portion of the exhibit contained displays of various foods or food containers. One of my favorites was the Pez dispenser exhibit.

After COPIA, we drove north to St. Helena. We had some time to kill, so we stopped at the CIA. No, not that CIA...the Culinary Institute of America. It wasn't planned, and I had no idea whether it was open to the public, but my noseyness paid off. We walked around a little and also found a great gift shop. The building itself is really beautiful, as most of the buildings in Napa Valley are. There seems to be a concerted effort to ensure architectural fluidity in the area, so everything is beautiful, yet nothing sticks out like a sore thumb.

After CIA, we headed down to Beringer Winery for the Historical District Tour. Beringer is the oldest continuously operating winery in Napa Valley. Remember how I mentioned that some wineries were able to survive even during prohibition? Beringer is one of them that survived by providing wine for "medicinal" purposes and for sacrament. Beringer is a really beautiful property, with a number of historical buildings. The people there were really great too. The guy who conducted our tour started off by giving each of us a bottle of water, with a Beringer label on it...a nice touch!

We toured the Hudson House, an adjacent wooded area and courtyard, caves where wine is aged, and ended up in the Rhine House (shown above) where a gift shop and tasting rooms are housed. Our tour included wine tasting in the reserve room upstairs, which was really nice. The wine was REALLY good, and we ended up buying a bunch of stuff and joining their wine club...hey, these guys are smart. They get you all liquored up and then send you downstairs into the gift shop!

We drove back down to the Napa River Inn where we barely had enough time to change and make our dinner reservation at Angele, one of Napa's premier restaurants. The service was very professional and attentive, and the food was excellent. The bread was nice and warm and toasty, and we started off with French onion soup, which was very yummy and cheesey. For entrees we had a bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin served with a red pepper sauce, and a side of what looked like corn mixed with some kind of rice, and a ribeye (which really looked more like a filet mignon) served in a red wine reduction with french fries. Everything was really yummy!

Napa's only downfall is that there really is not a lot to do at night. We ended up walking around Downtown Napa (this must've been around 8:30-ish), and the only things still open were restaurants and Mervyn's department store. Yet somehow I still managed not to get my blog updated until 4 days later! All in all, a really great day in Napa.