Day 3 – Napa Anniversary Vacation
Day 3 was packed. First was an egg, bacon and cheese sandwich on an english muffin from The Model Bakery (as shown on The Best Thing I Ever Ate, Zagat 22/30). My husband couldn’t be more excited to go to the Francis Ford Coppola winery in Sonoma. (Note: we didn’t realize, when we made the reservations for the winery, that it was 1.5 hours away from where we were in Napa. Whoops. But that didn’t stop us.) Tour of the winery, lunch and the infamous Rustic restaurant! We arrived a lot earlier than anticipated, so we decided to stop at the nearby Clos du Bois winery, and I am glad we did! The gentleman that guided our tasting, George, was super nice. Their chardonnay quickly became a favorite for me, along with one of their dessert wines. One hour later and our first entry into the world of wine clubs, we were ready to move on to FFC. As we said goodbye to George, he handed us a bottle of my fave chardonnay as an anniversary gift – so nice!!
The grounds of Francis Ford Coppola’s winery was impeccable. Even the clouds and rainy weather couldn’t dampen it.
First, we toured all of his movie memorabilia (the REAL reason why my husband wanted to visit…). Here are some pics:
Lunch at Rustic was delicious and comforting – an arugula pizza followed by old school rigatoni and meatballs. YUM (Zagat 21/30).
This was our view during lunch:
The drive home was great, but we were so tired. Not tired enough though to stop in at Markham, a vineyard with some great blends.
For dinner we stayed close to the hotel – sushi at Sushi Mambo (Zagat ). The menu was quite interesting – they had three “ways” of spelling mussels – that way, muscles and mussels – I twitched a bit considering I proofread as part of my job.
