6:30 AM - Vacation or not, this is the time I get up these days. Yes, I know, it's sad. Anyway, today I'm down to the car to move it and see if we have a big problem or not; turns out probably not, as there is very little water on the ground under the car. Anyway we still have to have it checked out, if we have a hole a hose or the radiator we have to have it checked out.
7:15 AM - TRACEY IS UP TOO!! Obviously you know there is a problem when the wife is up and it starts with a "7" !!
7:30 AM - After a very lovely breakfast (sausages, eggs, waffles, muffins, etc...much better than the usual free breakfast), we head down to the Honda dealership. They tell us that according to our symptoms, it's more than likely just the air conditioning dripping through as it is supposed to (and it has nothing to do with the large rock that hit us). Just to confirm they check all the fluids to make sure nothing is wrong, and everything looks fine so we probably dodged a bullet. Phew!
Well, we are ahead of schedule but there is no reason not the hit the highway and get down to Napa. I am in the driver's seat again, we'll see if I can possibly drive for three hours again today!
9:15 AM - Nope. Tracey takes over and I'm asleep in minutes.
After my lovely wife misses the turnoff (second time this trip, already!!!), I wake up..... if she was ever going to miss a turn, this was the one to miss though, as the next exit takes us ostensibly to the same place, so no harm done and no time lost. And, since we are way ahead of schedule anyway, I have no reason to bitch (but I will anyway, because that's what I do!). We get onto a cute little highway that I have dubbed "The Long and Winding Road". That title pretty much sums it up. Up, down, left, right, up and right, left and down, holy crap. I actually feel bad that I am not driving on this cool little road....and my wishes are soon granted as Tracey pulls over because she is actually feeling a bit woozy from all the crazy driving! I mock her a little bit ("gee, honey, if you are sick from driving this highway you are going to have fun on the Disney rides") as you would all expect me to do (so would SHE). As I drive the highway like I'm driving in the Indy 500 (seriously after putting our car into SPORT mode it drives so INCREDIBLY well) I am having a great deal of fun, but I have to retract the mocking as it starts to get to me a little bit too. That is some serious back and forth and up and down at high speed. Still, a very very fun drive.
We've been driving to California, off and on, for 10 years, and have always bitched about all the freaking construction. It is still there, but this time we have noticed it is FINALLY paying off!! Miles and miles of beautiful, paved highway...including long stretches of the I-5 and almost all of The Long and Winding Road. What an incredible difference it makes to the drive! Kudos to the California highway people. If any of you happen to know any of them, please give them my best ;-)
1:15 PM - We arrive at our hotel, Best Western Premier Ivy Napa Valley; beautiful!! Man did we ever luck out. We booked this quite a while ago, and the price almost doubled between that time and today for the same room. And we got luckier than that..... we had originally zeroed in on an absolutely gorgeous resort called Andaz Napa, which was pretty reasonably priced for a high end resort (I should call it "Napa Reasonable", which means we would have only had to sell one kidney each to afford it), but when we went to book it all the normal rooms were sold out, leaving only suites in the $500-600/night range. That was more than I was willing to spend ( I mean, c'mon, why not save a couple bucks and spend it on the WINE!!!), so we went elsewhere and found this place. Then the earthquake hit....and Andaz Napa is one of only TWO hotels in the Napa area that is still closed! Had we booked it when we first found it, we would have had to cancel and scramble for a new hotel just about 10 days ago, and we would have never found anything close to this good at the price we booked it for. We would have ended up at a Motel 6 or something probably. Man did we get lucky.
2:30 PM - We pick up some lunch/dinner at Panda Express, some water and pop at Target, and head back to the room. You know you're eating some haute nouveau cuisine when Panda Express is by FAR the classiest meal you've had during a trip......yesterday's meals consisted of Taco Bell and Dairy Queen so this was quite a step up. I believe that there are quite a few better meals ahead of us on this trip :-) After lunch, off to the smallish, but very nice, pool and hot tub to unwind a bit.
4:30 PM - After I'm done with the pool, I ask the Front Desk where to go and get a nice bottle of wine, and they send me down to a specialty grocery store that reminds me a lot of Whole Foods. They have quite a nice selection of wine. I find a bottle of 2008 Wolf Blass Gold Label Shiraz for $20 (yes I know I'm in Napa freaking Valley and just bought a bottle of Australian wine, but at that price I can't resist), and I notice they have a clearance buggy marked "Earthquake Shake Sale". They don't have that much left in there, but they did have this little beauty:
A $100 bottle of Napa Cabernet Sauvignon, on sale for $60. It was on the ground after the earthquake but was not damaged, except for the fact that the broken bottles had leaked all over it. They cleaned it up and are selling it for 40% off.....sounds good to me! I haven't tried this wine before but this is one of the wineries that was recommended to me for this trip. I couldn't fit them into our schedule, so this is a pretty exciting way to try it at a very reasonable price. When I tried to open it, I noticed one little problem...I forgot to bring a freaking corkscrew!! LOL what an asshole. We remembered our aerator and our nice Cabernet Sauvignon glasses, but forgot the corkscrew!!! Thankfully we are in Napa and the front desk has one, so we take it over there and they are able to open it for us. It's lovely (the quake shook some up sediment, no doubt, but no harm done), and the longer it sits in the glass it improves greatly. I'll have a full review of it on my wine blog once I get that updated.
7:00 PM - In the room watching TV and uploading this blog while finishing off this great bottle of wine. This is a pretty damn good start to what is going to be an EPIC vacation! Tomorrow we visit Opus One, Silver Oak, and Turnbull Cellars....wow that's going to be a great day!
Time to finish off the chinese food too and chill out before bed. Tomorrow starts early as we will get breakfast here in the morning before starting at Opus One and 10:30 AM. Yes, 10:30 AM. Thankfully there is a long winery tour first so we won't actually be drinking wine until close to Noon; my experiences at tasting wine in the AM have not been entirely positive up to this point (looks like I need some personal growth in that area!).
Ciao until tomorrow!
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