Day trip to Napa Valley, California

We’ve only been in San Francisco for a night and the itinerary for the next day was – day trip to Napa Valley! We were meant to leave by 8:30AM that morning but the weather did not look good at all, cloudy and it started to rain pretty heavily. So bad that we were convinced that the rest of the day would be yucky and not ideal for Napa Valley so we planned to do some indoor sightseeing. When we drove out at 10AM, I was still having second thoughts whether we should just go to Napa Valley anyways regardless of the weather.. and we did! So glad that we did because shortly after the sun came out and the sky just got bluer as we drove.

Okay, some parts of the drive we went through dark clouds again and light rain but that was it

A complete rainbow! pot of gold must be near… 🙂

The weather was perfect and we loved that Napa still had a bit of Autumn left to show… now if only it didn’t rain that morning..

Oxbow Public Market

We decided to grab a bite before continuing the drive, so Oxbow Public Market from a quick Google search in the car, appeared to be a good choice.

Never thought I’d see a pumpkin this big in my life…

Inside the market were several stalls, mostly selling food, kitchenware and homeware. There was a good selection of eateries, we probably did 3 rounds at least before deciding that we’ll have tacos.

“Cheese, cheese and more cheese” – Alfred 😛

Crab and duck taco!

Alfred chose cider sorbet from Three twins, it tasted just like apple pie!

The remaining few hours of the afternoon was spent winery hopping, well with the limited time we only managed to see 2. We didn’t try any wines because Alfred had to drive and its no fun taste testing alone 😛 It was nice just wandering around the grounds, the wineries are so pretty!

Berringer Winery

This is one of the more popular wineries in the area, a few old movies were filmed here too! Not enough of a movie junkie to know them, but Leonardo Di Caprio starred in one of them, hah. For those who aren’t into wine tasting, its worth a visit just to stroll around the property. They have tours to their underground cellars too if that interests you.

The city centre of Napa wasn’t too far away so we decided to explore it on foot before heading towards St Helena.

Berringer Winery

Driving a long, you can’t miss this pretty grad building sitting on top of the hill. Imagine ‘home’ looked like this.

Both born/built in the same year, who aged better? 😛

The GPS took us through the back roads of St Helena.. then we saw fields like this, golden hour made it even more beautiful.

St Helena

We decided to quickly drive through the main strip of St Helena, even though we didn’t have time to wander around on foot. There appeared to be more shops and restaurants then Napa, there was even a shopping complex with Wholefoods too! So I imagine it would be a good neighbour to stay in.

If we decided to stay for dinner, we would’ve tried The girl & the fig, ah next time!

The Pub, Ghiradelli Square

We stopped by Ghiradelli Square for dinner on the way back to town, we were recommended to try The Pub on the ground level. The serving sizes felt large, probably because of all the sides it came with and was inexpensive too. He got Southern Fried Chicken (delish!) and I got the sticky ribs, equally finger licking good. Thanks for the rec Tina! Our camera batteries died shortly after, so that’s a wrap for the day!