Napa Anniversary Trip 2018 - Planning

Honeymooners - July 2008

On June 28, 2008, I became a very lucky man and married the love of my life.  We decided to go to San Francisco and Napa Valley for our honeymoon.  We loved this part of our country.  It was beautiful, relaxed and exciting all at once.  We also love high end food and wine so it became an adult version of Disneyland for us.  A couple of years later, we went back to Napa with another couple and had a great time.  This has  become one of our favorite places.

Because of our experience, we talked about going back for our 10 year anniversary.  We invited friends and family to go with us.  A lot has changed over 10 years (people have moved, had children, got married, etc) and now that we are ready to go, we have a group of 8 going to Napa in October 2018.

I am becoming quite proficient in planning Disney trips and it is pretty easy to plan a trip with just me and my wife, but I have not planned a trip with us and a group of friends.  This is a new experience.  We had dinner with our group and they basically told us they are along for the ride, so it is up to us to plan it. Perfect. We have done a couple of pre-trip events (wine dinner done by one fo our friends and a wine dinner with tasting at a local restaurant).  This has allowed us to discuss our plan and ideas to get a better idea of what we should do.  It has taken some time, but we are about a month away and everything is booked.  Here is our plan:

Napa - 2011

When and Length of Stay:
We found that October worked best for everyone.  We are leaving in the middle of October for 4 nights.  We will be spending the first afternoon in San Francisco and then the remainder of the time in Napa and Sonoma.  Two of our friends are actually going to Oregon the weekend before and then meeting us in Napa when we arrive. When we decided on October, for some reason we did not realize it will be during or shortly after harvest.  This has made the trip a little more expensive than originally expected.

Transportation:
We are flying Southwest to SFO through Phoenix.  We looked at several options including flying into Sacramento or Oakland and they were not much cheaper and times were not any better.  I also wanted to go to San Francisco for a little bit since we will be there.

It took a little bit of time to decide on ground transportation.  At first we thought we might just try to use Uber everywhere, but that would be more frustration and uncertainty getting to and from locations.  We would also have to carry all of our stuff with us.  Then we looked at private transportation and it was not cheap.  It also left us without transportation when we were not going to tastings.  One of our friends found a company that has private drivers, but they will use your car including rental cars.  We looked into it and it seems like a good deal (we'll see).  I went ahead and rented a 12-15 passenger van so we will have enough room and we reserved a driver for 3 days.

Accommodations:
Lodging became fairly straightforward.  There are not a lot of hotels and the rooms were very expensive this time of year.  We decided to look to rent a house.  We looked on several websites and found one on VRBO.  It is not super expensive, but it is a good size and in a good location.  It should work well for us. The house is in Sonoma and not far from the square.  It seems like a good location and should have good accommodations for everyone.

FARM at Carneros

Food:
There is some great food in wine country.  We had some trouble narrowing down where to eat.  We are starting at Scoma's for lunch on the way through San Francisco.  This is one of Lisa and my favorite places to eat.  I am really excited for it.  We are having dinner at The Girl and The Fig in the Sonoma square for dinner Wednesday.  Lisa has wanted to eat here for a long time.  We are eating lunch at Gott's Roadside and FARM in Carneros for dinner on Thursday.  FARM looks like a very nice spot with a tasting menu (Lisa wanted 1 fancy tasting menu dinner).  Friday we will be having a wine lunch at St Francis winery and then we are making dinner at the house.  Saturday will be an olive oil tasting at Round Pond and some bites at their wine tasting.  Dinner will be at Oenotri.  We will not have any problem finding delicious tastes on our trip.

View from Repris - 2011

Tastings:
We have 3 lined up each day.  Lisa and I are members at Ceja Vineyards and Round Pond so we will be visiting them.  Our friend has memberships at Repris and St Francis so we will be stopping there as well.  Our non-member visits are Schramsberg, Scribe, Lasseter, Mumm and Pine Ridge.  I am excited for Lasseter.  We have had their wine in Disneyland and Walt Disney World.  It is delicious.  I am already thinking about joining their club.  Mmm......this is going to be a good trip.

Our trip is really close.  We are getting really excited.  Here we go!

Round Pond - We are ready for you!