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Rob's Valentine's Getaway to Napa Valley with His Wife Janell
February 9th-11th, 2007
For Valentine's Day this year, my wife and I decided to do a few things; We're going to enjoy President's weekend in our beautiful new home, we're going to go out for a lovely dinner on Valentine's night and we spent this past weekend at one of our favorite places in the world, Napa.

This time we stayed at a place we've been to many times, Harvest Inn in St Helena. We find most of the accommodations in Napa to be overpriced and simply adequate in terms of service, so we really can't say that we recommend this place. For the purpose of a short weekend stay though, Harvest Inn did just fine for us. |
This is the view from outside our room. Kinda looks like a Thomas Kincaid painting, doesn't it? |

This picture was taken shortly after we unpacked and, um, tested the bed. As you can see, the room is a fairly simple, one room bungalow. Don't get me wrong, it's nice, but keep in mind this place costs just under $500 per night. Overpriced, yes? |

Since it was our Valentine's weekend, we brought some silly blankets and pillows and made the bed fun. |

This we love about the Harvest Inn; Giant brick fireplaces that still allow you to burn real, old fashioned, wood fires. We went through two cases of Dura-flame logs and two bags of pine firewood in 2 days. |
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These are stupid pictures of one of the best restaurants in Napa, Bistro Don Giovanni. Like a complete ass, I forgot my camera Friday night when we ate there so I had to take these Saturday morning. The food here is amazing, although it is loud and very cramped inside. Certainly not a romantic dinner setting, but if you know that you're going for the food and not the ambiance, you won't be disappointed. I had the most amazing pork chop of my life, my wife raved about her ravioli and they serve something called a Trifle that is the best dessert ever invented, anywhere. It's layer upon layer of vanilla custard, chocolate cake, toasted almonds, caramel and whipped cream.
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Back at the Harvest Inn, we have found one of our least favorite design flaws of the room. For some idiotic reason, they have hung a towel rack right in the entry way of the bathroom, which gets hit by a shoulder almost anytime anyone walks into the bathroom. Very stupid and annoying. |
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Making this even more annoying is the fact, as my lovely wife points out here, that there is a giant, unused wall no where near where anyone would walk at the back of the bathroom which would have been a much better place for a towel rack. Stupid. |

Saturday morning was reserved for winery visits and tastings. Here we are at Luna. They make great wine, but their staff was not friendly this day.
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This was taken looking out over the vineyards at Luna Winery. I think I look like a dork, but my wife likes it and that's all that matters. |
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One of our favorite wineries to visit is called Regusci. Some of their wines are good, but we mainly come every time to see their dogs, all five of them, which usually roam around the property and play with guests. Sadly, they had all been "skunked" the day before we visited and were being kept away from visitors because they actually smelled worse than Dawn.
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Speaking of Dawn, we stopped along Silverado Trail just to take this picture for Dawn. This is a private residence that has a giant horse statue out front, which would look great at Dawn's country home. |

This is the outside of a winery called Darioush, which is one of the most amazing architectural wineries in all of Napa. Unfortunately, when you build a structure like this a lot of people assume that you are charging a lot for your wines to simply pay for the decorating. I must admit, that's my opinion. Their wines are ok, but certainly not worth the $80 per bottle they charge for Cabernet. |
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Inside Darioush is just as impressive. Look closely, that is an actual water stream behind those plates. |
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The bathrooms at the Darioush Winery are absurdly nice. These are all taken in the men's room, and my wife says that the ladies room looks similar, thought she says not as nice. |

Another picture for Dawn. These were in one of the many sitting rooms at Darioush, but they were not for sale otherwise we would have got them for Dawn. |
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After visiting a half dozen wineries, we had decided that the rest of Saturday would be spent romantically in our room with a roaring fire. That meant food provided by our favorite store, Dean and Deluca. You have never seen so many meats, cheeses, breads, oils and other fine foods in your life. We bought a bunch of great stuff and headed back to the room. |

I took this picture just for Arnie, it's a Nutter-Butter cookie. For some reason, I didn't buy him one and bring it home, which seems odd to me since I was going to buy cow chairs for Dawn. Oh well, nothing I can do about it now. Enjoy the picture buddy! |

We have arrived back at the room and it's time to take one of those silly couple pictures of ourselves.
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This is my wife's idea of proper climate control. The fire is just for ambience, I married a fricken penguin who likes the room at 59 degrees year round. You're welcome, PG&E. |
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As you can see, we have a lovely view out our back door onto the patio. Stupidly, though, the hot tub has no cover over it, so when it rains (as it did all weekend) you get poured upon while in the hot tub. |

We, of course, did not allow the rain to interfere with out good time, and I was bound and determined to have a fine cigar in the hot tub… and yes, ladies, I am au naturale in this photo. |

On the way into and out of Napa, there is a farm that has our favorite cows, which we call "Oreo cows," for obvious reasons.
Those are my photos. Drop me an email for "Listener Mail" with any comments or questions about our weekend. |
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