Napa Valley and beyond.

Alister and I went for a little drive up to the Napa Valley. First the map.
After a foggy start we made it to Yountville in just under 2 hours.


We stopped at Bouchon bakery to have a snack and another coffee to keep us going. The pastries looked wonderful.


The croissant was too flaky, the dmac (double macchiato) was not the best but the pain aux raisins (raisin bread) was superb.


We visited the local information stall and recieved a 2 for 1 wine tasting ticket for one of the local wineries, St Supery's. (It must be a good winery, the winemaker is from the Barossa !) It was an old cattle ranch called the Dollarhide that was built in the 1800's and it looked very French and very pretty.








We kept wandering up the road and stopped for lunch at the Silverado Brewery. The beer was great, the food less so. The building was built in the 1800's and was very rustic.




I had the Dungeness crab cakes with fresh corn and cilantro lime salsa and avocado tomatillo sauce. The salad and sauce were better than the cakes.


I then had the pulled pork burger for entree with coleslaw, pickles and sweet potato chips. 1. Americans call the main dish, the entree and they call the entree, the appertiser. Weird. 2. Pulled pork is just slow roasted pork that has been pulled apart rather than cut. It is fibrous and stringy but very soft and delicious. 3. Sweet potato chips are very common over here. 4. The buns are usually too sweet, another thing the Americans love, they have a much sweeter palate.


After lunch we drove to the "Old faithful" geyser in Calistoga. The whole area is in the middle of an extinct volcano with the mountain ridges surrounding it the only remanents of the crater. This geyser is only one of three in the world that have a reasonably reliable gush of water and steam. This one blows every 40 minutes or so, it slows down a bit if there is any volcanic activity within about 500 miles of it and so is being monitored.




It starts by steaming a little


Then erupts into a towering jet of steam and water.


I managed to get a movie of it starting to erupt. You will have to excuse the camera clicking and the wobbliness, it's hard to hold two cameras at once.


Alaster even took a photo of me with the geyser in the background.


More tomorrow. ;)