After a quick stop at the grocery for provisions, we were back on the open California road.
Californians spend a lot of time in their cars, and it's no wonder given the beautiful world right outside the car windows. This is a famous landmark described to me as the "Flintstones House". But I doubt this kind of place would be affordable on a rock-breaker's salary.
We said a quick hello to our old friends South San Francisco (The Industrial City) and San Francisco proper ...
And then crossing the Bay Bridge took us to a road that seemed confused with regard to what direction it was actually going.
Finally we passed the last remaining sign of the edges of civilization.
And we were in wine country.
Needless to say, we were im-pressed. Get it?
First stop in the City of Napa, CA was the Marriott hotel, where we picked up some goodies courtesy of the sponsors of the Napa Valley Marathon.
The we went to check in at our hotel, a nice little boutique place in a renovated mill complex along the river, right in downtown Napa. It was a gorgeous place and a surprisingly good deal. Even the guy working at the Marriott told us it was "very nice," and I figured he would know something about hotels.
We had nice views of the river (not a particularly large one, but water nonetheless).
And the renovated complex itself had been well designed with open plazas and small shops, restaurants, and artwork along the ground floor.
I suppose the fact that the complex was entirely surrounded by construction might have been a potential drawback to the place, but it was the weekend, and we didn't especially care.
The remainder of the evening was left for exploring downtown Napa, which admittedly was not exactly what I expected it to be. Having visited "downtown" areas in heavily touristed districts, I was expecting something decidedly upscale, dominated by swanky restaurants and boutique stores.
Instead, we found an area that somewhat defied the classy, upscale image of the Napa Valley by showcasing some of the more ... um, I guess you could say utilitarian functions of a city center.
Right near the old mill there was a nice block of historic buildings, one of which was an opera house where Ladysmith Black Mambazo happened to be performing that night. We didn't go.
We also learned a fun fact about Napa's history from this sculpture, which unfortunately did not play any music.
Napa is a place that's big on the art of "tasting," and I was pleased to find that wine was not the only epicurean delight celebrated around here.
But for the most part, even within the manicured pedestrian mall in the middle of downtown, the landscape was characterized by empty storefronts.
And a few not-so-empty ones.
Clearly there was some urban planning at work, as we found several types of interventions meant to "soften" the area. One of them was this "Bike Boulevard."
Given the fact that for all purposes, besides the signage and markings, this seemed in every way like a normal street, we couldn't figure out what "Bike Blvd" was really supposed to mean.
I suppose one good thing the downtown had going for it was one-stop shopping for all your essential needs.
As the evening drew in, we decided we should get some food to fuel up for the next morning. As the only decently large Italian restaurant in the area had a 45-minute wait, we put our names in and strolled down to Cicero's Cafe for a quick drink and a snack.
It can only be assumed that nobody told the people at Cicero's there was a marathon the next day, and so when dozens of runners started filling the place and overwhelming the one poor waitress and one cook in the place, things started to come apart really fast. We did get our drinks and snack, about a half hour after we had ordered them, and made our way back to the restaurant for our perfectly suitable pasta meals.
Sunday, March 2, we left our hotel room about quarter past five to catch the shuttle bus to Calistoga, where we would begin the 26.2 mile journey down the length of the Silverado Trail ending up back in the City of Napa. Unfortunately, the shuttles were running a bit late, dropping everyone off near the starting line without much time to spare and causing a mad crunch for the Port-A-Johns. It was while standing towards the front of this line that I noticed the crowd of people in the area start moving forward across the starting line, without any apparent provocation that I noticed. So after tearing off my warm-ups, dashing in and out of the Port-A-John, and handing off my warm-up bag to the man who would presumably be shuttling it to the finish, I crossed the starting line and began the Napa Valley Marathon, about 4 minutes after the race had "officially" started.
About 3 hours 12 minutes later, or about 3 hours 16 minutes after the official start of the race, I crossed the finish line with my legs feeling like they were on fire. After several bottles of water, some very slow walking, physical therapy, ice, a massage, and another long wait for a shuttle, we were on our way back to our hotel, where we arrived approximately 7 hours after we had left it.
I didn't get to take photos of all this, but my associate has a few and has promised he would share -- more on that in the future.
The first thing we did was tear into the complimentary breakfast that was left in our room.
After some showers, naps, and medication, we decided it was time for more food, this time of a slightly more temporal variety.
For our next stop we decided not to go too far out, so we visited the Copia Center for Wine, Food and the Arts.
This center was founded by Robert Mondavi, who through his generosity was able to remedy the nation's dire need for a center for wine, food and the arts. The wine part was easily noticed and rather cleverly presented as a system of automatic pouring wine-tasting units.
Not only did this help take some of the edge off, it also had an educational aspect, teaching how to identify varietals and taste the difference generated when wines are aged in oak. It even taught how to identify common "flaws" in particular bottles of wine. Leave it to the people of Napa to make learning fun.
We even learned about how the size of wine bottles affects the flavor (wine in larger bottles ages better - did you know that?). Have you ever drank from a Nebuchadnezzar?
So the "food" portion of this center consisted of a gallery of "interactive" exhibits on such things as candy bars, chili peppers and kitchen-cleaning robots. There was a trivia game and even a "name the smell" module.
The "art" portion, at least for the time being, was a gallery of photographs from different wine-growing regions all across the country. I took an interest in this photograph of signs in the wine-producing region of Ohio.
But probably the most delightful thing about this center were the gardens, showcasing a range of different fruits and vegetables.
To top off the experience, there were some large urns made of bottlecaps.
And there was Robert Mondavi himself.
We enjoyed that stop - all the more so because it was free - and decided to venture a little ways up to St. Helena. This was more the type of town I was expecting to see in the area, with upscale shops downtown, and gentlemen photographing women in bathrobes out on balconies.
We went there to check out a brew pub we had heard about. It gave us the chance to do some tasting of a different variety, but altogether it was not too different from what one would find at any halfway decent brew pub. The decor was pretty interesting though, it would have felt just like a brewery of the middle ages if it weren't for the big screen TV.
That evening we returned for some fine French dining at Angele, the restaurant adjacent to our hotel. Fully stuffed and worn out, we had a great night's sleep.
Monday, March 3, we were awakened at the crack of 8 by the construction starting up again.
After enjoying yet another delicious complimentary breakfast, we checked out and headed back up into the valley.
This time we stopped at Mumm Napa, a winery specializing in sparkling wines (the kind that are actually champagne, but not allowed to be called champagne). It also specializes in tourism, with a heavy emphasis on educating the lay consumer.
Not to mention evocative glassware.
And celebrity tie-ins.
Luckily for us, this meant that we got to take a tour of the facility.
This included their large fermentation area. The large white cylinder in the center was described to us as a huge blender that they use to create specific blends.
We also got to see "Bob," their cute name for a robot arm that picks up and carefully stacks wine bottles at high speeds.
After going through a gallery of decently interesting Ansel Adams photographs, the tour ends at the shamelessly pleasant tasting patio by the old live oak tree overlooking the vineyards.
Everything was done to be attractive to the non-connoisseur, all the way down to the adorable cracker trays that were minituratized versions of their grape-harvesting containers.
We sampled some of their "classic" bubblies as well as some newer models, perhaps learning a bit about sparklings in the process. Would you have guessed that the wine in the middle and the one on the right are actually the same wines, just one (middle) was aged in a regular bottle and the other (right) was aged in a magnum?
Saying goodbye to Mumm, we were on our way back up the Silverado Trail, retracing the marathon route in the opposite direction. This gave me an opportunity to once again look at the only thing that made me laugh during the race.
Here's a closer look.
Back up in Calistoga we went by something we weren't sure existed,m the so-called "Old Faithful of the West" geyser. Apparently no one was told that the actual Old Faithful is, in fact, also in the West.
It was $8 to see it - we didn't go.
Instead we swung over to Sonoma County, to the little town of Healdsburg, a commercial area replete with many winery tasting rooms.
As well as some other local-interest stuff.
This town was a little more along the lines of what I expected Napa to be. In fact, when chatting with one of the wine purveyors about what they thought of the town planning, her response indicated that the general wisdom is "nobody wants it to be like Napa."
Anyway, after getting quite happy off of tastings and coming away with a bottle of the best Chardonnay I've tasted, we made a quick stop at Taqueria El Sombrero so that my associate could get his Mexican fix before returning to DC that evening.
It also provided an example of an unfortunate failure in interior design.
Sadly we had to say goodbye to Healdsburg as well, coming back through the city on a slightly more scenic route.
Since we had a little time to kill before seeing my associate to the airport, we spent a little time doing after-dark sightseeing in the Hayes Valley area, where an overhead highway had been removed and allowed open space, as well as fashionable retail, to once again see the light of day.
There were some movable kaleidoscopes. You know, for kids.
And a store claiming to be "America's First Sake Shop," though I might have to look into the veracity of that claim.
After making the airport drop, we came back to Palo Alto and to the house of another associate, where video game characters appeared in larger-than-life sizes right on the wall.
I was hurting throughout both of my legs and was having trouble getting the right one to function at all. And yet somehow, I was convinced that playing DDR would be a good idea.
So I'll leave you with this money shot, until I'm able to blog again.
2 comments:
i am so jealous of your napa trip! i've been wanting to go to the wine country forever...
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