It is pretty early (7:30am) and we need to go soon go get our continental breakfast. But we wanted to start catching up alittle first.
On Saturday we headed to Napa Valley, excited to spend the day in winey country. First we went to Beringer Vineyards, where we had a tour at 10:30am. The property was so pretty- there was a big mansion and then the winery part, all surrounded by beautiful flowers. Unfortunately the nice hospitality ended there. We went in to check in and were greeted by a man who was not happy to see us. He first made it clear that all tours were already sold out (not listening to us when we tried to explain that we already had reservations) and that you have to be 21 in order to go on the tours. After repeating it like 3 times, he finally checked us in and sent us where to wait. We were now feeling awful about the tour and basically just wanted to leave because everyone around us was about 30 years older than us and looking down their noses at us. But we stuck it out obviously because we had already paid and hoped the tour would turn around our feelings about the place.
We Were Very Wrong. We began the tour with about 15 other people and Scott our tour guide who was probably in his sixties and of course only carded 2 people- us. He first looked at Jen's and then mine and then proclaimed, "what are you guys like twins?" Assuming he was joking because he had just looked at both the date AND year of our birthdays I answer "well I mean 2 and a half years apart." Apparently this was hilarious and he then felt the need to repeat that to everyone in the group describing what we said while he was "checking to see if we were underage." SO now everyone was staring at us and chuckling. Great.
Then the tour started and we learned something very important about wine....wine tours are extemely boring!!!! We took lots of pictures throughout the tour to entertain ourselves but holy moly was it a long and dull tour. We then finally went to the tasting part of the tour and went to a table that had 3 glasses of baby amounts of wine as well as a little plate with about 3 potato chips, a little piece of cheese, and a chocolate. I must say I was more excited about the food but of course that was soon squelched also. The chips were delicious and were paired with a red wine that..was not quite as delicious. The cheese had been sitting out for a bit and didn't taste great but was paired with an $115 red wine that tasted exactly like the first one which was $40. Then it was time for the waay to sweet dessert wine but I didn't even care because I was so excited for the chocolate. WELL the chocolate (which I took a big bite of) had gross orange fruit in the middle. YUCK. And that concluded the tour of Beringer.
We then headed to our next tour which was at Chandon, the champagne place. On the way, we stopped at Sutter Home Winery which turned out to be our most favorite winery. They had a complimentary wine tasting of 4 wines and we then bought a delicious $5 bottle and were on our way, smiles back in place. We were now at an awkward time-needing to eat lunch but needing to be at our tour in 45 minutes. We decided to skip lunch and head to the tour where we first had a glass of champagne and dreamt of eating the food that kept passing by us to tables outside (the cheese plate was $15 so needless to say we were not eating there). Finally it was time for our champagne tour which was much more interesting than the wine one but still kind of dull.
We then headed to our hotel in downtown Napa, the Travelodge-dun dun dun. From the moment we pulled in, we were less than impressed. Our impressions didn't get better as we entered our room, but at least the bathroom was clean. Weell things went from bad to worse when I walked across the room and step on something gooey and black and hairy!!!!!! AHHHHH! That took about 30 minutes to recover from.
Downtown Napa was very cute though! The area was pretty small and didn't have much of a night life- ergo there were 3 bachelorette parties taking place at the small, not really fun bar that we went to for a drink. But we walked around in the morning and had a great breakfast outside!
Things we learned about wine:
-for white wine, the grapes are gently squished to get the juice out but leaving the skin behind
-the skin of grapes is what adds the tannen-the more bitter taste in red wines
-for red wine, the grapes and skins are squished up together
-bubbles in champagne are made from carbon dioxide and each bottle has about 40 million bubbles
Optimism Column:
-Joanna sucks at taking pictures out the window while Jen is driving
-flip flops are necessary at all times at a Travelodge..as well as ear plugs when your noisy neighbors are "jumping on the bed"
-bachelorette parties are kind of lame in Napa
-it is cold here..apparently just bringing bathing suits and flip flops was not the best plan
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| It's hard to see Jen's face in this picture but it is not happy. |
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| Example of Joanna's picture taking :) whoops! |
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