It's just the right amount of pretentious.

Saturday, April 18^th, 2015.

Napa, CA / Los Angeles, CA

Its 9am, we are slowly waking and seeing our hotel room in the harsh light of day. I was in charge of booking this hotel room and was aiming for maximum proximity to downtown with minimum cost. In a word, our hotel is Old. It’s 1970s-old. As we pack up and get ready for the day, we discuss whether with our room is charming or disgusting, a debate that will remain unresolved.

Once we are packed up and checked out we decide to have brunch at Grace’s Table. I order the quiche and soup and also split the iron skillet cornbread with Laura. Everything is wonderful, including the coffee. After breakfast, we decide to do a quick lap around downtown Napa. We stop at an olive oil company, where I pick up a few gifts for my co-workers. Next we go to an open market, which is just the right amount of pretentious, and we end our walking tour with a quick stop at the river walk.

Before we know it, its time to head to San Francisco for Laura and Sarah’s flight back to AUS. The drive back to San Francisco is quiet, we are all contemplating this awesome vacation. When we arrive, we have enough time for one more tourist stop; we choose the painted ladies, which are the famous houses shown in the opening sequence of Full House. Since there is no parking, we make a few blocks, driving past them slowly. 

OK, now its time to get to the airport. Eventually I drop off Laura and Sarah at SFO. Now it’s time for me to drive back to LA. There are multiple routes to choose from, so I pick the one that goes through Gilroy (also known as, the garlic capital of the world). I love stopping at fruit stands and this route does not disappoint! Eventually I re-enter Los Angeles county with a large bag of garlic, 2 kinds of salsa, a crate of strawberries, and 4 large avocados. When I arrive home it takes me four trips to carry all of my wine, food and bags into the house.

Whew, I am back. What an awesome trip!

Wonderful, I was hoping to be swaddled today.

Friday, April 17^th, 2015.

Calistoga, CA / Napa, CA

Its 8:30am and we are already getting up for the day. We have spa appointments scheduled for 10 and 10:15am and we need to pack, check out, and get breakfast beforehand. Around 9:15am we are heading over to Sarfornia; this is our favorite restaurant in Calistoga. The service is a little slower than we expected and we are wrapping up by 9:55. We quickly walk over to the spa and check in for our appointments.

We have all signed up for a treatment called “The Works”. We have no idea what to expect. The nice lady at the desk tells us that they can take 2 people back at a time. Clearly we all want to go by ourselves, but the problem is solved by Laura and I going together, since her and Sarah are sisters (logic I still don’t understand). It’s okay though; I have feeling that an awesome travel story is about happen as Laura and I are guided behind the curtain and into the lady’s spa area.

The nice woman shows Laura and I to a large, communal changing area and tells us to strip down and then walk over to the far end of the spa. There are lockers for us to store our clothes and shoes. I look skeptically at the nice lady and the communal changing room. She reads my look (which she probably receives 10 times a day) and basically tells me to buck up and loose my threads. Laura and I migrate to opposite ends of the changing area and bury our faces in the corner while we strip. We are friends, but we don’t want to be naked together.

After our clothes are safely stuffed away in lockers located on opposite ends of the changing room, we wrap ourselves in teeny, tiny towels and walk to the far end of the lady’s spa. In this area there are 3 attendants, 2 mud baths, 4 bathtubs overflowing with mineral/spring water and 3 showers. One of the attendants leads me to a shower, takes my teeny, tiny towel away and tells me to rinse off (meanwhile Laura is being led to another shower by another attendant. I mentally take note of my head start and rinse off super fast so that I can hop in my mud bath before Laura gets out of the shower. As soon as Laura is safely tucked away in her shower, I basically bolt out of mine and announce that I am ready for the mud. She walks me over to a large tub full of mud and gives an agonizingly, long explanation of how to properly enter the tub. I listen carefully and then plop in.

The mud is a lot denser than I had anticipated and I am basically lying on top of it, totally nude. I know that Laura is taking extra long in her shower in order to give me a head start, so I try my best to shimmy down into the mud before she arrives. Its takes a lot of shimmying on my behalf and my attendant shoveling mud on top of me before I finally sink halfway down into the pit. I am just being fitted with a spa pillow and cucumber slices for eyes when I hear Laura being directed on the proper way to enter the tub. I sit still with my eyes closed in order to give my friend some illusion of privacy.

At first the mud is relaxing. It’s warm and dense. After the novelty of it begins to wear off I become hyper aware of the smell (it actually smells like mud) and the heat. Just when I think I cannot take it anymore I am summoned by my spa attendant to get out of the tub and back into the shower. Getting out of the mud is also super awkward, but Laura’s eyes are cucumbered still, so I just try my best to go quickly. After my shower, I am led to a mineral bath, which is personal size tub with water constantly flowing into it and splashing out into the drains on the floor. I make it safely into the tub while Laura is still in her shower. The tubs are divided by curtains, so the illusion of privacy is easier to uphold.

The tub is pretty comfy. My attendant brings me several rounds of cucumber-flavored water, which I continue to drink very quickly. I am moderately hungover and the incessant heat is starting to get to me. After a few more minutes, my attendant comes back and shows me to the smallest steam room I have ever seen. There is another lady sitting across from me and I have to angle my knees to avoid hitting her (Dr. Wilkinson clearly had no understanding of personal space.). Soon the lady leaves and I have the space to myself. I am just starting to relax when Laura enters the steam room. We both have our skimpy towels cinched tightly around us, but it’s still weird. She leaves relatively soon. I want to leave too, but I wait an additional 5 minutes, providing the cursory naked-friend-time-buffer.

Once I exit the steam room my attendant swoops in and leads me into what looks like a small changing room with a cot off to the side. She takes my towel and asks me to lie on the cot, face up. Once I am lying there, she wraps me up in a thin blanket and then leaves. Okay. I lie quietly, swaddled in the blanket. I’m not really sure what to do. I know I should be relaxing, but instead I stare at the celling and wonder what will happen next.

After what seems like forever, a new lady comes in to great me. As she un-swaddles me, she explains that we are going to a massage room, where my treatment will be completed with a 30 minutes massage session. I happily follow her to my treatment room. After a pretty nice massage I am given a robe and sent back into the communal changing room. It is empty, so I grab my clothes from my locker and frantically put them on before anyone else arrives. Once I am dressed again I breathe a sigh of relief and wander over the vanity area where I put on make up and dry my hair.

Eventually we all converge in the vanity area. We are clothed again and ready to hit the wineries!

Since we will be staying in Napa tonight (on the south side of the valley), we decide to try some wineries in that area. Sarah suggests that we go to Andretti and we all agree. On the way there, I realize that I am hungry again. Laura and Sarah agree to make a quick stop at a deli in Yountville, which is on the way. The guy in the deli is Italian, so I order an Italian sub. Laura and Sarah get some food as well.

Soon we arrive at Andretti. It’s 2pm and the tasting room is about halfway full. A nice man pours several tastings and hangs around just long enough to answer questions and provide good service. I like the wine here a lot. After our tasting, we purchase a bottle of red and go outside to enjoy our deli sandwiches, wine, and the beautiful surroundings. 

Now that we are settled we do a quick debrief of our spa experience. We cannot stop laughing – what a strange experience!

Next we decide to go to a winery called Laird. When we arrive the tasting room is empty except for the barista and his cute daughter (who looks around 11 years old). The man insists that we go sit outside; we agree.

It’s a little hot outside, but once we find a place in the shade, we are all happy. We end up trying 5 different wines (3 of which are chardonnays – yay!). The service is great and the wine is great. All 3 of us end up buying one or more bottles on the way out. 

It's getting late, but today is our last day here, so we decide to go to one more winery. Sarah finds one called Trinitas Cellars, which is open late. Hooray!

Trinitas Cellars is actually located in a hotel called the Meritage Resort (which is like Disneyland for winos). We are irrationally happy to be here, even though we have to trudge through a small wedding party to get to the tasting room. Once we are inside, we are greeted by 2 baristas and given excellent service. The wine is okay, but I am not crazy about it. After we are done with our tastings, Laura convinces us to purchase a bottle to drink next to the fire pits. I am moderately drunk at this point, but it’s our last winery and I can’t say no. As we sip our wine and drunk babble about our various lives, I begin to feel sad that this trip is nearing its end. Eventually hunger overtakes nostalgia and we all pile back in the car for Napa, CA, our final destination.

Our hotel is about one mile outside of downtown Napa, a distance that seemed walkable when we were booking the hotel, but we are drunk and hungry, so we park in a garage downtown and head over to Zuzu for the best tapas in Napa. Its Friday night and the wait is an hour, but we don’t mind. There is plenty to do in the meanwhile. We wander around and eventually set up shop at a wine bar next door. By the time our table is ready we are all sufficiently starving (and bordering on too-drunk-to-be-in-public).

Dinner is amazing. After we settle the tab, its time to go check into our hotel. I am definitely drunk, so Sarah drives, I navigate, and Laura sleeps in the backseat.

Checking in is a total blur. We all eventually make it into our designated hotel room and onto our beds.

We may have overdone it. In our defense, it's our last night vacation and none of us wants it to end.   

  

       

 

The Dude goes to Calistoga.

Thursday, April 16^th, 2015.

Calistoga, CA

Its 9am and my travel companions, still on Texas time, are awake and ready to roll. I begrudgingly crawl out of bed and don on wine tasting outfit #1 (a long skirt and tank top... In case you are wondering wine tasting outfit #2 is similar. When I drunk packed earlier this week, I made the decision that Napa-Michele will not wear pants as they are too constrictive. I mentally pat myself on the back for making a good-drunk-packing-decision. After all, they are few and far between.).

We start out with brunch at a charming café called Sarafornia. There is quote on the wall that explains the name: “I’m going to make it the Calistoga of Sarafornia”. Wait a minute that quote explains nothing; we will remain confused for the remainder of our vacation. 

Brunch is fantastic. I have biscuits and gravy and my vegetarian companions are satisfied with their meals as well. We finish our very strong coffees, pay the bill, and we are off! It's time to visit some wineries!

We start the day at Clos Pegase. The tasting room kinda looks like a prison from the outside but are not deterred. As we enter, we become aware that we are the first and only customers. The barista is nice; she has a wonderful British accent and serves us 5 different tastings. The wine is just okay. As we are leaving I am guilted into buying a bottle of chardonnay, the service was really good.

Hmmmm, what to do next? There is really only one answer to that question.

 

Its almost noon and we are rolling up to tasting room #2. Envy Winery. Again the tasting room is empty and we suspect that we are the first customers of the day. I resist the urge to tell the barista that it is well past noon in the central time zone. We proceed to small talk (a skill at which we all truly excel… it’s required coursework when you grow up in Texas) and try 5 different types of wine. Near the end of our tasting we decide to take a quick break and sit on the patio with a chilled bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. It really is too early in the day to go to a third winery (we have standards).   

We are relaxing and enjoying good conversation when I suddenly wish that we had cheese to go with our wine. There is some in the car, but I think it would be better if I had some in my purse. I find this sentiment simultaneously hilarious and sad… uh oh, I may be drunk.  

Soon its time to make a decision about where to go next. I really, really want to go to Cakebread and Laura and Sarah are agreeable. We need an appointment to taste there, so Sarah sets one up on the ride over. When we arrive the vineyard is beautiful. We are grouped with 2 couples, one of which is from Texas (5 out of 7 of us are Texan!). After a quick tour we are given an overview of how to taste wine and 5 very wonderful pours of different kinds of chardonnays and a few reds. As a bonus they let us keep our glasses when we leave.

After Cakebread we have time for one more stop. We head over to V. Sattui. After our tasting we buy a bottle of white along with some food from the deli and find a table outside. We spend the rest of the day here. The weather is beautiful and the wine is delicious.

After a full day of wine tasting we head back to Calistoga. Having eaten lunch at 5pm, we are not hungry for dinner. It’s time to put on our swimsuits and sit in the hot tub all night. We make it a few hours before we decide to make a grocery store run. Determined to achieve maximum relaxation I throw on my bathrobe over my swimsuit and a pair sandals and wander over to the market. People are staring, but I don’t care. This is my Big Lebowski moment and I feel no shame.

After a dinner of wine, ice cream, and pretzels, we return to the hot tub. We finish off the evening with good conversation and eventually turn in for the night.

I am already excited about tomorrow – we will visit the Dr. Wilkinson Spa and Mud Baths!