To and Fro

To and fro, but we made it home! Robert and I were able to take an extremely relaxing vacation for a week in California. From this week, we were able to chalk up endless memories, stories, and laughs.

As we left Washington, we had huge smiles on our faces just waiting to arrive in sunny California and drive to Napa. Once we arrived in San Fran, we just needed to grab our luggage and rental car before leaving for Napa. As we were standing at baggage claim, I turned to Robert and said, "This is where I always start to pray that my luggage arrives." As the last of the bags descended onto the baggage claim belt, Robert was still bagless. Needless to say, Robert went up to talk to the baggage claim representatives. The entire staff was not too helpful in the situation. The manager told Robert and I, "Somebody must have taken the bag." Awe-some, so helpful. Wonderful. The other representative gave Robert a claim number to follow online, but once he asked what the airline would do if it was never found (a.k.a receive compensation for his clothes) the representative, again, not too helpful.

We left United Airlines not too thrilled, but we didn't want it to ruin our vacation. We got our red Chevy car (Robert would know what kind of Chevy, I on the other hand, not so much). Each time we road in the car I couldn't help but laugh because of the uncomforting sounds Spit-Fire (the name we called the car) would make. As we started driving, we ended up taking the incorrect exits numerous times (we can now look back and laugh). AND once we had found the correct roads to take, we forgot that there were tolls in California and neither of us carry cash. As we were drawing nearer and nearer to the tolls, I was rummaging through my wallet, counting the coins I had. In eye sight of the toll, I only had $4.65 and we were in need of $5. Rummaging more through my wallet, I found $5 I saved for the last day of school, for coffee but never used it!

Robert turned to me and said, "Things ar looking up! YAY!"

Needless to say, we made it safely to Napa, where it was warm and gorgeous.



That is the temperature the day we arrived in Napa.

You could walk everywhere in Napa. This is part of downtown Napa where there are gorgeous stores, wine bars (of course!), and endless restaurants.

Since we arrived later in the afternoon and after being up since 4:00, we just walked around Napa and went to various wine bars that evening before crashing. That night around midnight we got a call in our room informing us, that yes, Robert's baggage had been delievered to the hotel! YES!

The next day, we signed up for a wine train. First, the bus took us up to Raymond Winery to tour. There, we spent about an hour and a half walking around the winery, learning, and soaking up tips about tasting wine. 

Also at Raymond, there was a chance to interact with the animals, as you can see above. There, Robert is feeding the goat rosemary. Who knew goats ate rosemary?! I definitely did not. From the winery, we hopped on the train for a fantastic lunch as we went through endless vineyards for about an hour and a half. It was definitely beautiful, to say the least.

The next day, Robert and I had scheduled a couple winery tours. The first tour was wine tasting with a cheese pairing at Robert Mondavi. At first we were skeptical because Mondavi is such a big winery that we thought it was going to be just this huge tour and commercialized. And on the contrary, it was not. We ended up having a private tour of Mondavi and the tour guide let us ask any questions we wanted and took us places that other tours were not going.  

 This is a picture of Robert and I in the aging room. There are a lot more barrels that what is pictured!

Just the beginning of the tour. We were starting to go through the vineyards.

This is a picture of just some of the acres that Mondavi owns.

 Another picture of the aging room-- more barrels.



These are the wines we had with our cheese pairing. They were all fantastic wines.

After Mondavi, we had another wine tour that we set off to find. This tour was a bit of a shock, especially the location and drive. 

To even start driving up to the winery, you had to radio up (which Robert is doing above) to open the gate. CRAZY!

This is a picture from where the winery is located. We started down by the lake.

Another picture from the same winery.

That was our last full day in Napa. Before leaving on Monday, we decided to go to this winery that we both wanted to see. It was absolutely beautiful. It was fun just sitting outside on a gorgeous day wine tasting, without having a care in the world. At this winery, we found a merlot that I like. I never like merlot, but this was a perfect creation of merlot. 

This was part of the garden we were relaxing, wine tasting in.

After we were done wine tasting, we started our journey back to San Fran for a couple days. In San Fran, we road the cable cars, got lost, saw a worker's demonstration in the street, walked around the pier, froze of bootays off, and so much more.



On the 4th of July, we spent the entire day down at Pier 39. It was such a fun day. First of all, the sun was shining and everybody was having a great time. Down in the pier, there were bands playing, shows, tons of people, and just the vibe was so much fun. Once night was setting in, Robert and I were starting to get cold. It never occurred to us to bring heavy sweatshirts to California, so we had to go buy cheap $10 sweatshirts (matching lime green) to keep us warm for the fireworks. After the fireworks, we were going to ride the cable car back to our hotel, well, we found out that the cable cars were not running after the fireworks (go figure). Instead of riding the cable car, we ended up walking from the pier back to our hotel (only about 2 miles, not bad).

It felt great getting away and relaxing. Everybody needs to relax and walk away from the everyday stress in life. Needless to say, to and fro we did make it back home.