sparkles and splashes

Rachel promised she'd tell you about it, but I'll give you a rundown about our trip to Napa. We stayed at the Old World Napa Inn in a verry nice room. It had a fifty inch flat screen, big bathtub, separate showers, king size bed, and my own little touch, a bottle of Domain Chandon Sparkling Wine waiting in the room for us. (the lady actually brought it to us two minutes after we walked in). Well, thats all Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum needed to get a night going in Napa. We downed the bottle and headed out. We chose a cute little spot for dinner and ordered a second bottle of sparkles (unlike us to drink sparkles but it was nice). We sat outside and basked in the actual summer weather, which we, by, have forgotten the pleasures of. We decided to eat light so that we could go to another restaurant later. We split mussels and then Halibut. Both delicious. The mussels were the biggest I'd ever seen anywhere. We paid our bill and walked around downtown Napa, which is absolutely adorable. It reminded us of Cherry Creek in Colorado, but more quaint. We found a bar and decided to go in for a cocktail. We sat down and ordered mojitos. While the drinks were delicious, we hated the energy of the bar so we enjoyed each others company, drank our mint rum and were on our way. We walked around some more and next thing I know, it's dark outside and I ask Rachel what she'd like to do next. She grabbed my hand and said "I know what I want to do". Flopping my shoulders quickly up and down I say "ok!" and briskly followed her along. I remember being astonished that she knew where she was going. Before I can try to figure out where she's taking me, I realize we're siting in a nice Italian restaurant, for whatever reason, making the decision with our server to get a bottle of more sparkles. Finally time slowed back down and I took a moment to look around. This place was pretty nice! Great menu too. Are we even hungry? Drunk, obviously, but hungry? Who cares. We're in Napa. We order steak carpaccio and some sort of appetizer sampler. Pretty yummy. We both have big crushes on Gnocchi in any sort of pesto so even though we were full, it was on the menu so we followed with that. Mistake. It was so salty we couldn't even force it down. We even contemplated for a moment about whether or not we should complain. We decided against it and asked for the bill (we couldn't fit dessert) and left a full glass of sparkles each. Thank goodness! We got home and leaped into our big bed. Rachel was out as soon as she hit the pillow while I stayed up and drunkly watched Frasier and the Golden Girls on our big TV. I didn't finish the episode of Golden Girls and I find myself still wondering what happened to Dorothy at the end. We woke up at 9 for breakfast, which was held downstairs in the "wine cellar". It was very yummy, but not the easiest breakfast we'd ever gotten through. We crawled back to our room and fell asleep for another hour. I told Rachel to make sure we were ready to go at 11. At least we felt better after our nap. We showered and we ready in time to meet Lonnie outside. I had arranged for Lonnie to pick us up in a nice big SUV and take us Vinyard hopping for a few hours. We climbed into the SUV and found...you'll never guess....a bottle of....sparkles!...in the backseat with two empty glasses and to cold water bottles. Lonnie said it was for us and that we could do whatever we wanted with it, even if we wanted to take it with us and "drink it in our bathtub tonight or whatever we want". Phew. We thanked him and both went for the water bottles. He took us to four wineries throughout the day. I had given a list of the wineries to my manger at Fog City before hand and he made a few phone calls. Each of the wineries gave us complimentary tastings. To show our thanks we bought at least one bottle of wine at each winery. We ended up with around $200 dollars worth of wine...but really nice wine. We had asked Lonnie in the SUV what his favorite kind of wine was. He had mentioned he liked Cabs,so we bought him a bottle of Cab that we gave to him at the end. At the second winery we went to, which was the biggest one, Lonnie set a picnic for us overlooking the vinyards. We had sandwiches and pineapple coleslaw while someone who worked at the winery came over every once in a while to give us a taste of a different wine. Then Lonnie surprised us with a homemade cake and a candle for Rachel. Our last vinyard was our favorite. The man who owned it took us out and showed us the vines and described the growing process. Then we went inside for a tasting. We liked his wines the best too. We bought three bottles from him. Lonnie dropped us off and I thanked him a million times. He seemed very touched that we had bought him a bottle of wine. (A nice bottle). We went back into our big Bed and Breakfast room and laid down for a little while. Then we went out to dinner at La Toque. We were going to do the tasting but the menu is set up that you could choose any four things on the menu for a set price. Because you could choose what you wanted that way, we each did that. We had lobster salad, mushroom and fava bean ravioli (which was my favorite), fried halibut (also very good), soft shell crab, duck, rabbit and lamb. It was fun, but all in all a little disappointing. Being blown away by food is so much fun and the ravioli was really the only thing that did that. Service was really great though. It was one of the back servers first day and you could tell he was nervous. He was super sweet and would say "merci" to each of us every time he refilled our water. (which he would refill after we took two sips). We went home and I tried to stay up for Golden Girls to try and find out what happened the night before but I fell asleep during Frasier. Breakfast the next morning was much easier to get through. We tried not to eat too much before Rachel's big birthday lunch. This was the big event of the trip. I had made reservations at Morimoto Napa. I had secretly e-mailed the executive chef to tell him we were coming. I had met Chef Lunak months ago while working at Clio in Boston. I was his backwaiter and he gave me his card towards the end of his meal telling me if I were ever to move to Napa to call him for a job. Yes, yes I'm kicking myself in the ass now. Well, we got there and decided we wanted to sit outside in the sun. This restaurant inside is seriously seriously awesome. We were pumped the moment we walked in. Our server came over and asked us about water. Someone came over and filled our water. Our waiter came back two minutes later with two glasses of sparkles, smiling. The Chef sent us sparkles! Two words...rock...star. I looked like a rockstar. I knew the chef and he just sent me and my girlfriend out champagne! This guy is no joke. He's on Morimoto's team on Iron Chef America. The one with the blonde facial hair for next time you watch. We cheersed and sat looking at our menus in awe and excitement. Someone was coming over. We looked up. The coolest looking dish I'd ever seen was placed on our table. It was Morimoto's famous toro tartare with six condiments. Again, no joke. It's a 28$ dollar appetizer. And it was freaking....amazing. We gobbled it up and had a blast doing it. It was cleared from our table. Or waiter came back over....and took our menus away. Took them away. He said "it looks like your in for a leisurely lunch". We both sat there wide-eyed. Then, half-shelled HUGE crablegs were set on our table smothered in some spicy red sauce. We both just stared at the food. Then at the waiter. Then back at the food. He told us what it was, smiled and walked away. We inhaled it. Someone came and took our empty plates away. Then two more dishes arrived. A lamb tartare and a tuna pizza. Seriously, some of the best food I've ever had, not to mention the most beautiful looking. While we stuffing our faces with raw meat covered in yumminess I looked up and Chef Lunak was standing over our table smiling, hand extended to me telling me how nice it was to see me again. I shook his hand and introduced him to Rachel. I tried to explain how grateful we were and how incredible his food was but I'm sure I couldn't possibly have done a good job. He said to make sure we said goodbye before we left and left us to our meal. After we were done the waiter finally brought us back our menus. We were so full but had to order something. We ordered rock shrimp tempura and miso glazed cod lunch combo thing. Both were good, but didn't compare to the mind blowing (there it is!) dishes he had chosen for us. While we were eating the General Manager of the restaurant came over. He extended his hand and said "I heard I'm supposed to recruit you." I laughed and told him he was more than welcome to. He chatted us up for a few minutes and gave us each his card, telling us that if we wanted to try Napa, we'd both have jobs. You better believe we had a pretty long discussion about moving to Napa when he walked away! We sadly decided against it and kept our sights on Brooklyn. However, I looked it up and there's a Morimoto in New York now. Looks like I'm keeping these contacts handy! While we were at lunch I gave Rach her birthday card and an envelope marked "What Are We Gonna Do On Your BIG Day??". Inside the envelope were two tickets for the day to Six Flags which is half way between Napa and San Francisco. We got there around 3 and knowing we only had 5 hours there (God forbid) we dropped some money for a Platinum Flash Pass. I don't know if you've noticed but Rachel and I like to pretend we're loaded...its actually our favorite thing to do. We got to skip all the lines. Lines that took an hour for others took us two minutes. Also, with our special wristbands we were allowed to ride a ride twice in a row if we felt like staying on. We learned quickly that roller coasters are short for a reason and only used that privilege twice. My favorite part of our six flags day were the two shows we saw. A dolphin show and a killer whale show. I would totally trade in nursing to be a whale or dolphin trainer so I might look into that. What job is better than that!? We also got center (towards) the front seats with our special flash passes and got cooled off a few times with some splashes. During the dolphin show some guy proposed to his girlfriend on the microphone which was sweet, but a little awkward. It was hard coming home but it was probably the best trip we've ever taken. Not that we don't kind of live on a big trip, but you know what I mean. Now our focus is saving money to finally settle down, which we're very excited about. Are there killer whale shows in Brooklyn? -lj