Napa to Santa Ana

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The weather has turned and we were glad to leave San Francisco and head up to Napa - apparently there are a few vineyards in the area. First stop SF airport to pick up the car - thought we we were being clever picking up a hire car at the airport but after an hour in the queue at budget car rental we decided it perhaps wasn’t the best place to hire a car - hey ho!

5 hours later we arrived in Napa for another house sit looking after 2 house dogs jasper and Tasha - very easy to look after and a good location to explore Napa valley.

Arriving mid afternoon on the Friday meant we had little time to acclimatise ourselves. So we simply popped into Napa to plan our attack of the wineries the following day - a helpful volunteer who kept reminding me of Tommy Cooper advised us where to go then we wandered the town. We were also fortunate to find out about Porchfest which was happening on the Sunday where 50 or so bands set up on porches in the residential district who then play between 12.30 and 4.30. That was Sunday sorted.

Saturday saw us driving the valley and we wandered in and out of 10 different wineries in order
Silverado
Odette
Pine Ridge
Mumm Napa
Clos Pegase
Chateau Montelena
Beringer
Ashes and diamonds
Domaine Chandon
Hess

Some we tasted the wines, some we wandered round but our favourites were Charles Montelena which had the first (maybe only) Californian wine to win an international wine competition in France (turned into a film with Alan Rickman called Bottle Shock), Mumm ( very nice sparkling wine plus photographic gallery featuring Anselm Adams), Odette (style), ashes and diamond for architecture but nil points for service - finally Hess, very nice winery with really fantastic art.

Sunday saw us meeting my uncle seamus and his good lady Melissa and wandering Napa watching various bands at Porchfest. An interesting idea that worked really well although you had to have a pretty big porch for some of these guys.

Next day wandered down the 101 to San Luis Obispo, stopover before heading to Santa Ana, and a university town with the best tri tip steak sandwich I have ever had ( and the only one).

Then on to Santa Ana and more of that later

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Comments

[Graham]

Where?!?!
Richard - glad to hear your sense of direction is still as good as ever - I think you may mean San Luis Obispo. And I like the concept of 'wandering' 260 miles!

[Richardandsue]

Lost
As ever where I lead nobody has a clue where i’ve Gone particularly me and yes you are right