A Little Trip...

....up to Napa, beautiful in the "winter".




We arrived on a rainy day. Our reservation at Mustard's had been lost - no matter, we sat at the bar and were still awed by the meal. AND that we were last there in 2002.



We soon learned about the endless wineries, wineries that were so down every lane that the lane above, had a HY Dept. sign letting you know that this one, this Niebaum Lane had NO winery.


BUT.. the masses found all of the other lanes satisfying! back in '02 there was no charge for wine tasting. Now it appears that $10 - $20 for a tasting is truly enticing.
At least to all of the folk here pictured.



We checked into our hotel where we found further libational luring. ( sorry had to make that word up). I do need to "get out of the house more often" when I am awed by a small hotel lobby containing a equally small bar for Bloody Marys and Champange beginning at 7:30 am.I decided right then that Napa was, if you did not stray off the main street, an assault on tourist livers.



But our trip was of a different sort, not victims of an assualt at all unlees it was food and beauty. We induldged in amazing food. The clicher being the famous French Laundry...no pictures here but, were there to be it would be, after NINE PLUS COURSES - the plus being everything that was sort of gifted between the NINE courses - they would be of this totally sated twosome. French Laundry is
experience as much as elegant consumption. A one time thing that you wont forget and, at least for me, probably do not have the capacity for repeating. We do have the menu and consider it so special as to have plans to frame it and hang it in the kitchen. I had heard this sort of thing before going, that it is and experience etc etc. I could not imagine any dining experience being more than a very fine restaurant but this was. I have to just leave it at that!

SO, we ate and ate and ate at outstanding restaurants, picked Meyer Lemons from the door of the hotel and savored the other Napa, that of glorious walks in the country side. The picture below is from an early morning walk on what absolutely qualifies as a quaint country lane. Right up my alley...or lane.