Napa Valley, California

Sunday, March 2nd at 6AM Ben and I and my mom and dad caught a flight out to Napa Valley, California for some vacation (yes that meant only about 3 hours of sleep after Katie's wedding night)! My parents go out there atleast once a year, and took Natalie and Stephen a few years ago. We had to wait our turn until after we were married, so now we got our chance! The first night, we had a dinner fit for kings. We were in the exclusive new restaurant's own wine cave. Everything was excellent and you can see at the end of the table the almost 10 bottles of wine we all drank. What a great way to start out the trip, with friends, family, winemakers, and winery workers (16 of us in all). The second day was "limo day." A very smart thing to have a driver when from 8AM to about 9PM we were drinking wine! This was Ben and my first winery to visit, so we got the crash course on wine making, an incredible and long process. This is the housing for some of the barrells at CAYMUS... My jaw dropped to the floor when we walked in the door.... The flowers were in full bloom Everywhere and BEAUTIFUL... I can't wait for our Alabama Spring Time! Later in the afternoon we went to Del Dotto.... I can't even describe what an incredible experience this was. The owner of the vineyard, Dave Del Dotto, invited us to his personal home. Then he walked us over to his brand new caves and tasting room.... this below is NOTHING like ANY other cave we went into (typically dirty, moldy, dark, old)... this was pure italian marble, italian chandelliers, marble molding, tile floors and walls, that opera boticelli guy (or whatever his name is) was playing on speakers throughout the cave, and the owner himself was pouring us tastes of about 30 wines STRAIGHT out of the barrels. Not to mention, that the place was CLOSED, so it was just us in there... incredible... Cheers to Dave Del Dotto for the best tasting ever, of the greatest wines, ever. (We were there until about 7PM, even in his own personal cellar, and I even knocked my purse into one of his wine glasses an broke it... quite embarrassing, but he didn't seem to mind one bit... i cleaned it up, i promise!)The third day, Tuesday, we drove ourselves to several wineries. Another amazing day, including a tour of an antique car collection (which Ben loved) at the winery Far Niente in the picture below. My mom took most of the group pictures on her camera, so when they get home from San Franciso I will get them from her. We had such a wonderful trip and loved every second of our mini-vacation. I have to say that I probably gained a few pounds because not only were we SO full of wine all day, but we ate some INCREDIBLE food. yummy yummy... this was the wine menu at a restaurant we went to... kinda the theme of the tripI took over 400 pictures, so the entire album is posted on Picasa Here.