Two Days in the Valley -Day Two

Today we decided to hit the Sonoma side of things. We had our 'breakfast drinks' at St. Francis. This was probably one of our more successful stops as they had great old vine Zin, Claret, Cab Franc, etc.

We then rolled out to the Pacific in the Bodega Bay area. Or Bodega Bog as it shall heretofore be known. It looked like something out of Return of the Jedi with all of the fog and mysterious research boxes in the middle of the bay.

After a brief stop in Bodega Bay we drove up the road a few minutes to see if the weather cleared up on the ocean. No such luck. The fog was so thick, you could barely see the waves crashing to shore.

At this point we had the brilliant idea to continue up through Sonoma and down through the other areas north of Napa (Calistoga, St. Helena, etc) that we hadn't seen. It's just that we didn't anticipate 405-style traffic from the Wine Auction to inundate the 29 back into Napa. Traffic was so bad today that we really only got to hit the one winery. By the time we got back into Napa, it was almost time for our reservations @ Julia's Kitchen at COPIA. We spent our early minutes perusing the offerings they had in their organic garden a.k.a. items we would be dining on momentarily.

For those of you who don't know...Julia's is an homage to Julia Child. There are certain dishes at this restaurant which are recipes of Julia's followed to a "T" and then there are others which are inspired by her style of cooking. The food is delectable. If you enjoy food and seeing creative chefs and learning new things about food - Mitch - I can't reccommend this place enough. I usually don't shoot food porn but the presentation on some of this stuff was so outstanding that I had to provide you with an attachment.

After filling our gullets on the fantastically fresh fare from Julia's we needed to walk some of this off, natch. What better place than the weekly Chef's Market? Dowtown Napa turns into a closed-off street festival every Friday with different vinters, food vendors and bands. While we didn't get there until well after 8, it appears that there was a pretty healthy turnout.

Well, we have an early and long day tomorrow so I'm off for now...