Napa Valley Bachelorette Party Weekend

I'm finally awake enough (yes, it took 3 days) to talk about my trip to Napa. I will absolutely remember this vacation forever; by far, up there in my top 3. Maybe even my top 2.

I don't think I've ever truly realized how blessed I am to have the friends that I do. Several of those girls you'll see in these pictures, I've known for about 15 years. Actually, the oldest friend I have is in these pictures...19 YEARS.

The trip was an amazing way to celebrate Nicole's bachelorette party and frankly, I want to plan a trip to go back in February with Adrian. That good. She was glowing the entire time and we all had such a blast.

On Friday, the girls and I drove up, leaving at 5am and rolled into Napa around 2:30pm. We stopped at Oakville Grocery store, best idea ever! It had an outside market with fruit for our sangria, bloody marys, sandwiches, sausages and anything else you can think of. We met one of the fruit stand workers who ended up hooking us up all weekend with sake bombs, too many drinks and a whole bag of free fruit.



Our first stop on Saturday was to Chandon. Quite the classy joint and I'm happy we were sober at the time! We drank sparkling wine, ate oysters and kicked off the day properly.



After Chandon, we hopped into our party bus, passed around open sparkling wine bottles and went to Oakville Grocery. Again. We had lunch and drank and smiled and took pictures and laughed and had an awesome time.

After Oakville Grocery, we headed to V. Sattui - not the best winery for many reasons. Too busy, not great wine, bad service. We still tasted and it was fine...but the best was yet to come!

You won't see pictures of our last stop to Merryvale because it was quite the shit show, as most bachelorette parties are. Let's just say, by the end of the tasting, we had gotten the person who was pouring wine drunk and we were all pouring our own drinks.

Sunday was the exclamation point of the weekend...I would do that day over and over and over and over for life. It started off at brunch, Fume Bistro, where we enjoyed delicious bloody marys with the world's best quiche and potatoes. Afterwards, we broke into a smaller group of just 7 while everyone else made the trek home and headed to Oakville Grocery to split a bottle of wine before our last tasting of the weekend.

Cade is a winery that allows tasting by appointment only, unlike the others we went to. You wind up through the beautiful vineyards for about 30 minutes, climb to the topside of a mountain and look over all of the luscious vines. It was amazing.

That's pure joy. Pretty sure we all felt that!

The final and probably my favorite event of the weekend was going to Bottega for dinner, a restaurant owned by celebrity chef, Michael Chiarello. We, of course, were super nerdy and asked all of the waitstaff if he'd be in. Unfortunately, we never got a glimpse but we DID eat some to-die-for food. From the appetizers to the last bite of our meal (okay, dessert wasn't spectacular but oh well!), the wine...everything.

It means congratulations in Italian, just for the bride!

No, no, no, let's not go home ever!

It was just...ahh...no words. I missed my boys tremendously and by Monday, I was pretty ready to be with them. However, I loved every second of this unforgettable weekend. Now I just can't wait until their wedding!!