Napa was awesome

Over the weekend I took Beth to Calistoga (in Napa Valley) for a birthday she doesn't want to admit she had. Since she took all of the pictures I can't post them (at least not yet), but here's the link to where we stayed: http://www.winewayinn.com/.

It was the first time either of us have stayed in a bed and breakfast, and it was pretty fun. The place was walking distance from the town, which basically has a half-mile Main Street and that's it. Calistoga is the northernmost of the five towns that make up the area, and from what I could tell, also the smallest and quietest. I hadn't realized until the first night when we were going to sleep with the window open how long it had been since I had heard complete quiet. I love living and working in the city, but it made me realize that I can probably stand to get away from it once in a while.

All in all, the breakfast was fantastic, and the small touches were a nice change from the usual chain hotels I normally stay at (compare this place to the Holiday Inn Express on the 10th Street bridge in Pittsburgh and you'll probably agree). However, I'm not sure Beth & I are cut out for being really talkative to strangers at breakfast. We mostly kept to ourselves while the other guests (who were mostly much older than us) chattered away.

We hit tastings at 2 wineries on Saturday, and another 6 or so on Sunday. Most of them were pretty good, and by the end we both started feeling pretty confident about knowing what we liked and didn't like. We ended up buying bottles to take home from 4 of them. Definitely a side trip I'd recommend to anyone coming up to the bay area in the future.

A few of the places we hit:

http://www.rutherfordhill.com/ (The first place we hit. A little more on the corporate side.)
http://www.vsattui.com/ (REALLY corporate and huge. It's nice because you can buy food and have a picnic on their grounds, but we had to wait a while just to do a tasting. We ended up buying a bottle of port, but I don't think we'd go back, unless we can find a less crowded day.)
http://www.bennettlane.com/ (This place was really nice. It was completely empty when we hit it first thing Sunday morning, and we ended up buying a bottle of red. At the end of the day we decided we liked one of their whites better than any other one we'd had that day, and should have bought that too.)
http://www.augustbriggswines.com/ (We didn't like their wines very much, although the people were very nice, and they didn't charge for tastings.)
http://mummnapa.com (Sparking wines are apparently different from champagne. It was a nice change after sitting several wineries that morning, but not our favorite.)
http://www.dutchhenry.com/ (Our last stop, and probably the funniest. The owner had pictures of himself and other guys reenacting old western scenes, and wore cowboy boots. We ended up buying a bottle of chardonnay.)