Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Napa Valley tips

I love this website and thought to pass along tips below I received from a close friend on visiting the Napa Valley. He obviously put a lot of effort into it and hopefully will help many others as well. Happy traveling!

Here are my quick notes regarding travel options:

- If at all possible, visit Napa during the week, rather than the weekend. The traffic heading up to Napa on Friday afternoon (when we were driving down from Napa) looked pretty brutal. So unless you enjoy being stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, try to visit during weekdays.

- We stayed at the Embassy Suites in Napa. Very nice hotel. I would recommend it highly. There are a lot of great small hotels, and B&B's in the area, if you're interested in that as well. Hotel prices can get high, although in July it shouldn't be that bad, since it's still well before the busy fall season.

- Wineries to visit: if you want, I can loan you a book that goes into exhaustive detail about all the different wineries.
The ones we visited, in order of preference:

- Robert Keenan: where we got engaged (so we're a little biased). need to call ahead in order to visit, since they won't take walk-ins. mention our names if you do go, the owners will remember us. =)

- Robert Mondavi: great tour for wine beginners... I highly recommend it

- Beringer: although we didn't do the tour, it's supposed to be pretty good as well. the private select cabernet is amazing - if you can find a coupon for a free tasting of it - it's one of the best cabs I've ever tasted. period.

- Rutherford Hill: very nice picnic area with an amazing view. (shares the same view as Auberge du Soleil, but for free)...if you do the picnic thing, I recommend their rose'. (although I can't believe I'm saying that, since I generally hate rose' wines.)

- Castillo di Amarosa: can't say much for their wine, but the castle that houses the winery is pretty darn cool.

- Joseph Phelps: their Insignia is supposed to be one of the best wines in the world, but we were both underwhelmed. nice view. a little bit on the pretentious side, to be honest. not very inviting.

- spas: if you're interested, check out the mudbaths at the spas in Calistoga. for us, it was a once-in-a-lifetime only sort of thing. I probably wouldn't do it again on my next visit, but it was very relaxing, if pricey.

- hot air balloon: also, somewhat pricey, but it is also a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I probably enjoyed it more than Sookyung, since she's a bit afraid of heights. but very very cool.
http://www.nvaloft.com/index.php

- restaurants: don't get me started. there are soooo many great options to choose from - the ones we went to:
- Della Santina: cute Italian place in Sonoma. excellent food. laid back. nice outdoor dining patio.

http://www.dellasantinas.com/trattoria/index.html
- Auberge du Soleil: amazing French place. this is where went to celebrate the evening of our engagement. extremely expensive, but worth every penny, both for the view and the food.

- check out COPIA if you get a chance - that's the wine/food museum. it's a good first stop before you check out other things. good beginner's winetasting course. great gift shop.

- limo winery tour: Beau Wine Tours. again, expensive, but worth it if you plan on visiting a lot of wineries in a day and doing a lot of tastings and don't want to drive. BTW, try not to fit in more than 4 wineries in a day. we did four the first day and were very tired afterwards.
http://www.beauwinetours.com/index.html

- Oakville Grocery - if you want to stock up for a picnic.
http://www.oakvillegrocery.com/default.php

- online resources that I used:
http://www.winecountry.com/cgi-bin/u...amp;category=2
http://www.napavalleytickets.com/
http://www.copia.org/
http://www.winecountrygetaways.com/naparest.html
http://www.sfgate.com/traveler/
http://www.forkandbottle.com/secrets..._top_picks.htm
http://www.gayot.com/travel/guides/c...pa_sonoma.html