California Trip - Napa Valley

I have done some research on Napa before the trip.  It's actually quite ironic as I am not
a alcohol fan (in fact, allergic to wine 8 out of 10 times), I shouldn't spend much time in the wine region. However, I do think wine-tasting is a fun activity and visiting wineries to learn how they deal with grapes sounds very interesting. At last, I selected the following spots to go for my first Napa visit:

We drove from San Franciso to St. Helena and had a great lunch at The Martini House.

The food was great. We sat next to the fireplace and enjoyed the renowned 'Cream of Mushroom'.















Then we drove to Rutherford- RoundPond and joined the Olive Oil Tasting Tour which we reserved in advance.

The staff explained how Olive oil was made and told us the differences between Italian Olive Oil and Spanish Olive Oil.  She said Good olive oil should be those who could make you cough.  My favorite part is tasting the red wine vinegar. It's amazingly good to taste it on a sugar cube.

 

We stayed in Napa at the Veno Bello Resort, it's a rather new hotel, adjacent to The Meritage.  The facilities are great. I did my laundry there and it's very thoughtful for them to provide the machine wash powder for 1 load.












The next day, we visited the Domaine Carnero. As we got limited time and very tiny quota for 'Wine' - one is a driver and one got wine-allergic, this is a great place. The building itself is beautiful and it has a great place for you to enjoy the winery scenery and sip a dip.

 

The Napa day was fun and I am sure that we'll be back in the future. Though I only visited one winery this time, I did learn a lot through the 'research' and I could now tell you at least 10 big names in Napa with a brief history of their wine.  :P 

Reference:
http://www.winecountrygetaways.com/

http://www.martinihouse.com/
http://www.domainecarneros.com
http://www.roundpond.com/index.cfm?method=pages.showPage&pageid=a4c96c93-d924-1a60-7136-0b11e4e49b8a

California Trip ~ Meeting Yun

We've traveled to Northern California during CNY.  It's been really lucky that we managed to escape from the snow storm and catch the flight on time. (8 out of 10 flights were canceled! )

We only had one-week but there's so many things we wanna do. For me, the top priority is to meet Yun ~ as I gotta clear my bad record ....Yun is my 'old' Ho-tung hall mate. She was an exchange student from Davis, probably when I was in Year 3 -- (In fact, I have no idea about the time now) We spent not very long time together but I really like this girl. :P  I have missed my appointments with her for the last two times because I simply 'fall asleep'.  So I disappointed her again and again...haha..so this time, I gotta meet her when I'm "awake". And Finally, I made it!

We had a wonderful night at Cafe Claude. For more details about the food. See Dolphinicious.

Festive Home

Thanks to my best friend, Tracy. She sent me a box of Doraemon(ssss) of different chinese zodiac.
I hanged those cute dolls to the 'Pile tree' - the ever lasting and never fallen down tree in my dining room and let it be a Fortune tree.  It's the first year we get together during the Chinese Lunar New Year.

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