Fall in Napa

It's taken me awhile to get to this post, but I wanted to share some photos from my latest getaway, up to Napa with my two of my longest and dearest friends. Since we all live far away from each other, we make it a point to pick one weekend out of the year to get together, sans husband and children. It's great! I always look forward to this time of being with friends who I've shared so much history with (one goes all the way back to preschool with me, and the other to elementary school). They have been with me through thick and thin, and I appreciate them SO much.

Wine country was absolutely beautiful the weekend we were there. We stayed in Calistoga, and the vineyards were like a sea of gold. The trees were also brilliant shades of yellow and red. I actually went for an early morning run through the vineyards and felt like I was in a movie or something, so picturesque!


We enjoyed wine tasting at a couple of vineyards, the first being Chateau Montelena (of the famous "Judgement of Paris" wine competition depicted in the movie, Bottle Shock). Truthfully there are so many wineries in this area, it is overwhelming to try and pick which one to go to. And we aren't the biggest wine connoisseurs to begin with, so we just took a couple of recommendations. The grounds at Chateau Montelena were beautiful, so we ate our picnic lunch there, after we finished our wine tasting. The wine was good, but a little out of our price range (one of the wines we tasted was a $135 bottle!), so we didn't buy any there. We spent a couple of hours just eating, chatting and enjoying the scenery.

Later we went to Rombauer, which also had beautiful grounds. We ended up buying a bottle of Zinfandel there, and drank it later that evening in our hotel room with dark chocolate cake and ice cream! We also treated ourselves to a nice dinner at the Calistoga Inn, which I would highly recommend. hmmm... what else did we do? We all forgot our swimsuits so we didn't get to take advantage of the mineral water pool at our hotel. And we bypassed on the famous Calistoga mud baths as well. That was OK, because the good food, fall colors, and fellowship with good friends was enough to make it an unforgettable weekend.