Napa, CA

I'm finally trying to get back on track and finish up my California blog posts. Earlier, I blogged about our time in San Francisco here and here. Today I'm going to recap our time in Napa. Thankfully, this day was a travel day, I opted not to play golf and I didn't have any work obligations until later that night so we took the opportunity to see Napa and the surrounding areas.

We aren't wine (or anything) drinkers so we focused on wineries that we could visit, walk around and take pictures at. Our first stop was Frog's Leap Winery which was our favorite in the sense of being able to relax. I saw this winery in one of Julia's blog posts and thought it had some pretty touches to it - it was even better in person! There were so many beautiful aspects to the winery - we were in picture heaven and even though we didn't drink, there was still a lot to walk around and see. If you did want to do a tasting, they did them out on the back porch which was very pretty and serene.

The sun was super harsh that day but there were so many gardens to walk through

Dress | Sandals

Okay, that was a lot of pictures... our next stop was at Hall Winery. This winery was a lot smaller and very modern. I think if I was going to take a tour, this place would be on my list - it looked like there was a lot of cool areas where they make the wines. They had some fun seating and areas to play lawn games but we were hot and hungry so we didn't hang around too long.

We stopped for sushi at Sushi Mambo in Calistoga which was pretty good. Calistoga had the most adorable downtown area - that city's area was my favorite. After lunch, we headed over to Chateau Montelena Winery which had the coolest exterior. We literally took a ton of pictures with the tri-pod in front of the Chateau, walked around the duck pond and then left. There wasn't too much for us to do but this would be the perfect place for a wine tasting or a picnic.

Initially, we planned to be done at this point but after talking to my SIL, we decided to go ahead and visit Castello di Amorosa Winery. This castle winery was so cool but seemed super touristy compared to the other vineyards. In order to enter the castle, you have to pay $25/pp which includes a wine tasting. We decided to go for it because when in Rome Napa. The inside of the castle was so cool and even though there was a ton to see, I definitely wanted to go on a tour. We took a chance with this wine tasting and were so pleasantly surprised when they had some amazing sweet wines. We loved every single one of them (literally a first) and ended up leaving with a bottle of their La Fantasia and a bottle of their grape juice. This one was probably our favorite since we had so much fun here :)

After Castello di Amorosa, we pulled off the side of the road and took pictures at one of the famous Napa Valley signs. After getting back to the hotel and cleaning up, we went to a work dinner at a fun Italian place in downtown Napa. We had so much fun and it was so worth the trip!