Napa Valley

Thank God for couch surfing. We stayed with Tonya in old town Napa. She has a beautiful apartment just a few blocks from main street. She had a couple other girls surfing with her our first night there. Jessica use to live in the Bay area and was a member to all these different wine clubs and took us on a tour with her and Jillian to wineries all over Napa for free wine tastings. We did this with them for 2 days. We were even able to go back this secret garden with the Native American gardener. He was in the process of planting white roses all over the side of the hill so that when there was a full moon it would just glow. He said he had a passion for making the world a more beautiful place. He sure did too.

We had another couple that stayed at Tonya's house our 3^rd night there. Lindsey and Josh. They are from Ohio & New York and in the process of doing a year trip like us. They are doing 4 months in the states and then going abroad. Tonya hooked us all up with a free tasting at Cakebread winery because her friend works there. Lindsey and Josh have a great blog that is worth checking out too. Hopefully we'll be meeting back up with them along our journey.

Annie & I had bought a Groupon for a winery weeks ago. We thought that'd be the only one that we would really get to go and experience. Most tastings would cost around $20 per person for a couple tastings. Vezer was the winery and it was a ways out of Napa. Only 2% of the California grapes are even grown in the Napa Valley. The tasting at Vezer was actually our favorite. The tasting guide was really funny and we got to taste some of the wine straight from the barrel. We got to try the original Cabernet solo then he added a little Merlot and made a blend then he added some Zinfandel to make the blend a little sweeter. I liked it best with just the first two blended so he added some more Cabernet to dry it back out. Then we got a meat, cheese and dark chocolate platter and sat and tried a few other wines to finish up the tasting. Our Napa experience was far better than we could have imagined!

Josh, Lindsey, Annie & I at Cakebread winery