Napa Getaway

The Candlelight Inn - Napa, CA (Beautiful!)

Jason and I just made our first trip to Napa (only a little over an hour away, but I guess I never felt a compulsion to go there before now) this past weekend and stayed in a bed & breakfast (first time for that also). What a difference from a hotel! Of course, for what we paid per night we could stay in a nice hotel as well, but somehow staying at a bed & breakfast was sort of like staying with friends -- but without having any obligation to spend time with them or do what they want to do! The Candlelight Inn was so cute (English Tudor house built in 1929) and we have decided that when we build or buy our dream house it will either have a huge spa tub or we will put one in. They're awesome! We had our own separate entrance for any time we didn't feel like walking through the front of the house, but since there are only a handful of rooms there aren't exactly a ton of people in the house. Cute cute cute. Where else away from home can you go from your room to breakfast in your socks and sit down and be served immediately? The 3-course breakfasts were on the gourmet side, but pretty good even though we don't normally go for that sort of thing. They had this spinach mushroom quiche with a little dollop of sour cream and pesto -- sounds weird to me, but YUM! We had dinner at an Italian place called Ristorante Allegria the first night, which is located in a building that used to be a bank. Adorable, and bustling with people. They even have seating in the bank vault if you want to eat in there (and we would have if we'd known about it before we were seated!). Excellent service. Jason had spaghetti bolognese and I had filet mignon with garlic mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus. They brought us bread and another appetizer before that (beef satay, deeeelicious, on a small bed of the freshest, tastiest spinach, yes, spinach, ever!). Couldn't eat our whole meals, but it was all yummy.

The next day, our anniversary, we did the touristy thing around Napa and Calistoga, starting with a trip to COPIA -- the museum for food, wine & the arts on the banks of the Napa River. Not too exciting, but we learned some things about chocolate (like stay the hell away from chocolate with more than 25% cacao in it!) and checked out the old Got Milk? advertisements, recorded little blurbs on our favorite meals, toured a little food museum, saw one of those big decorated cows that were all the rage a few years ago, and walked through their fruit/vegetable/herb garden . . . makes me wanna grow food! We took some pictures around the place and were getting ready to leave until we realized we forgot to get a picture of an exhibit we saw earlier, so went back for that then jumped a locked gate to walk briefly along the path by the river. Beautiful weather that day (until it started pouring on the drive back, but that was at the end of the day and we didn't mind a bit). From there we went to a dumpy little Round Table we saw on our way to wine country (the pizza made up for the lack of ambience). Then we drove off to find the Mumm winery since the only wine we really like is the sparkling kind. Found it! Tasted 4 different types of Mumm sparkling wine. Again, yum. I do love it. We strolled through a gallery exhibit at the winery by Art Rogers, whose focus is apparently taking pictures of people and families then getting them back together 5, 10, 15, even 20 years later and taking pictures again in the same exact poses as the first picture. Pretty stunning when taken as a whole -- kids grown up, families growing, people getting older -- all in black & white. Very simple concept, yet keeping track of all those people and getting them back to the same locations such a long time later must require considerable effort. It was really cool. His web site: http://www.artrogers.com/.

After Mumm, we continued up Silverado Trail and crossed over to Calistoga to find Old Faithful (one of 3, anyway). We got there about 10 minutes before it went off. It was interesting, but we didn't think it was worth the $8.00 per person they charged for the privilege! But, it's a historical thing and we were out that way and so figured we'd check it out. They also had some "fainting goats" on site; apparently when they hear loud noises their defense mechanism is to go stiff and, often, fall over (or "faint"). Then a few seconds later they get up and go back about their business. There was a mama and 2 babies (so cute!) but we didn't feel compelled to make any loud noises to test it out. Besides, they were eating. I'd be pretty pissed if someone scared the crap out of me while I was grubbing! I also learned, and shouldn't be surprised, I guess, that that there is an organization for people who are interested in fainting goats: the International Fainting Goat Association (seriously). They even have a web site: http://www.faintinggoat.com/. Something for everyone, I guess! I love goats, but honestly . . .

So after checking out the geyser and finding absolutely nothing of interest in their crappy little gift shop (aside from their machine that destroys pennies and puts geysers on them, which we did) we headed back toward Napa but not before I took a shortcut to the petrified forest which was only about 5-7 miles from the geyser. Jason had no idea where I was going, but he was happy when we got there and realized it was going to be much more interesting than Old Faithful. And cheaper! $6 instead of $8. They were a 1/2 hour away from closing, so we didn't exactly stroll through, but it's a pretty short and corralled walk -- less than half a mile, I think. I'll have to find something to read on it so I can feel like I really understood what it was all about, but basically there are a bunch of monsterous trees that are about 3.5 million years old and essentially turned to stone (not really, but they look and feel like it, hence the term petrified, or petrifaction -- http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=petrifaction). Big, big BIG trees! Many of them laying down, 40-60 feet long (just the part that was not buried) and 4-8 feet around, I think. We wished we'd had a little more time to contemplate them, but we just didn't. Jason found a ball in the gift shop made of petrified wood (from somewhere else in North America) that had been polished and decided he wanted that for a souvenir, so he got that. My souvenirs that day were a bottle of champagne, a magnet and some bath oil from the Mumm winery. We didn't even crack the champagne that night, we were so tired from all the running around!

After the petrified forest we headed back to the b&b to rest for a bit before dinner. We went to the Bay Leaf restaurant for dinner, a very nice, quiet restaurant where people are falling all over themselves to serve you. Not our usual dining experience, but it didn't take long to get used to it. They had a beautiful illuminated alabaster bar -- some of their walls had it in them, too. We were seated in a big private booth off to the side of a fireplace and had some bread, salads (Jason the mixed baby greens, me the Caesar) and then Jason had a half slab of ribs with a watermelon BBQ sauce (interesting, didn't really taste the watermelon but good) and these garlic fries that were just too good. Crispy, golden, and not covered in garlic like normal garlic fries. I would make those things at home if I could get the recipe! My dinner was grilled salmon (YUUUUUM) with a buerre blanc sauce (mmmmmmmm) with mashed potatoes and some fresh steamed vegetables. They brought us a dessert to acknowledge our anniversary and I don't remember exactly what it was, but there was a little almond-flavored cake with a cinnamon/apple crumb thing on top, I think, and SOUR CREAM vanilla ice cream. Never had that before. Tasted like cheese cake! We decided we have to find ourselves some of that.

So that was our second and final evening in Napa and the next morning we had our breakfast before heading out. I haven't even mentioned our first breakfast yet! What did we have? Let's see . . . the first day there was a berry smoothie for the first course, then some cranberry orange scones and carrot muffins (muffins were the bizomb) for the second course, and finally a fritatta with a couple of slices of ham for the third course. We learned we can't eat 3-course breakfasts. Too much food! Of course, we also drank about a half gallon of orange juice between us, but we couldn't have eaten it all anyway. So we ate what we could and went about our day. The second breakfast the first course was a sweet vanilla yogurt topped with fresh strawberries and blueberries and a dollop of whipped cream. The second course was raisin bread french toast with a sweet vanilla sauce (very filling) and the third course was a spinach mushroom quiche (huge for a quiche, like 2 or 3 hockey pucks piled up) with a dollop of sour cream and a touch of pesto. Really good! I may have mentioned the quiche already, I don't remember. It's worthy of a second mention. Jason didn't like it as much (texture issues) but he did like the flavor. It was cool to have so many things we normally wouldn't eat and certainly wouldn't feel compelled to order off a menu.

After breakfast we packed up and then walked the grounds of the Candlelight Inn a bit and took some great pictures. They really came out -- I'm happy with them. Might have to enlarge a few and put them on the wall! I was practicing framing my pictures this weekend and making sure the backgrounds complemented the shots. I think I got some good ones. We bought a hot chocolate cup (we don't drink coffee) from the Candlelight Inn with their logo on it, which is a representation of the inn, signed our bill, and were on our way. We hit an antique shop we had passed in Napa on our way out, but didn't find anything of interest there -- then tried to stop at a glass shop, but the one day it was closed happened to be Tuesday, the day we were leaving. Figures? Oh, well. The drive back was uneventful and though I would have been happy to have one more day at the B&B, we were happy to be home and Smokey (our cat) was ecstatic. She chased me all over the house for the first half hour we were home, afraid we were gonna leave again, I think. We had a lazy day, didn't do much but hang out, catch up with the neighbor and drink some champagne (well, I drank champagne . . . Jason drank beer).

Wednesday it was back to work but thankfully one of my attorneys was going out of town that day and gone through Monday, so I haven't seen him since last Friday when I wanted to kill him over a meeting he was having . . . so that was good. I'm ready for our next vacation! Cancun? Need to get started on planning!

Our getaway in a large nutshell. I have to see if I can figure out a way to post more of our photos without making my blog 5 miles long!