Napa Valley

We made six separate visits to Napa Valley.  There are over 400 wineries in that area, each with it's own personality.  We went by the Napa Valley Visitor Center and they helped a lot with suggestions and a detailed map.  We also did a lot of research on the Internet when making our selections of which wineries to visit.
The Andretti Winery was our favorite, the grounds were beautiful and the wine fit our tastes perfect.

The Vincent Arroyo Winery 

 was a good choice. Their grounds, tasting room and wines all were nice and it fit the budget too.

The Clif Family Winery
worked for us because they had a great food truck parked outside.  Great food and good wine, again all within our budget.

An impulse stop at Rutherford Ranch Winery 

was memorable. The Winery grounds were quiet and intimate with nice surrounding views of the vineyards plus a 100 year old grove of olive trees.

Here are some random shots of the acres and acres of grape vines filling all of Napa Valley.

Our RVing friends, John and Suzanne met us at Vineyard RV Park in Vacaville for a week of winery fun and exploring the San Francisco area.  We had a splendid lunch at the 

Culinary Institute of America, Greystone.

Built in 1889 of locally quarried volcanic stone, the historic Greystone Campus was once a cooperative winery serving the upper Napa region grape growers.  It was built in 2 years by the hands of 400 Chinese laborers, who were here because of the transcontinental railroad. 

Our meal of "Mushroom and Robiola Risotto" and "Mary's Rosemary Chicken Cutlet".

Strolling around this historic building, we found students in a classroom kitchen learning to work with chocolate.

This is just a small sampling of the Greystone's cork screw collection...some of them originating from all over the world.

The view of the vineyards from their dining room patio was impressive.

An earlier side trip Ronnie and I made to the "Jelly Belly" Jelly Bean Candy Factory, located in Fairfield, California was also remarkable.  The tour is self-guided with a free sample bag of jelly beans at the end. Yummmm..

Hey, look at that..  Jelly Belly jelly beans used to make art.  Here, artists used the candy like mosaic tiles to create different works of art.  President Ronald Regan loved jelly beans, that is the only thing we have in common.

Close-up of his right eye..

We bought one of their reject bags of irregular jelly beans called "Belly Flops" and they were yummy too.

We made 2 more sight-seeing trips to San Francisco.  We made one to visit the famous Chinatown District and to climb the Coit Tower and we also went back again with our friends, John and Suzanne to bike the Golden Gate Bridge.

More Later.