Hi there, it’s already time for another short update.
Breakfast
For once we decided to change our routine and to take our breakfast not at a Starbucks. This time we went to a typically American diner. It wasn’t the first breakfast in a diner for me, but the size of the pancake was worth mentioning. I have never seen such a huge pancake. I wanted to order two of those pancakes but the waitress told me to wait with the second one until I finished the first one. At first I thought she exaggerates, but she wasn’t. I hardly managed to eat my first one =)
Jelly Belly Jelly Beans
Because we only had a short drive to our next motel, we were looking for something to do . Therefore, we decided to skip the dessert in the diner and go straight to a candy factory to get our dose of sweets. Luckily, the Jelly Belly factory was right around the corner. The most famous candy produced by Jelly Belly are their Jelly beans. Those are candies formed like a bean and they come in over a hundred different flavors. The tour was for free and in the end, we even got some Jelly Beans to sample.
Napa Valley Wine Tasting
Motel 6 once again
We slept for two nights in Napa, the name-giving city of Napa Valley. On the day we arrived we didn’t go to any winery, instead we went to a washing saloon where I scored a new high score in Temple Run 2 =). For our dinner we went to a new grocery store: Wholefoods. The things in there are a little bit pricey, but the quality of food felt to be much better than at Walmart or Target. An example for this was the “Zopf” we bought. It’s the first time I saw one in America and it tasted delicious.
At Wholefoods we also found a nice bottle of wine to drink. But there were no wineglasses in our motel room. Therefore, after having left the Wholefoods, we drove across the parking lot to the Target and bought some wine glasses (made out of actual glass) for a dollar each. Well worth the money.
Wineries
I have seen some European vineyards but none of them was anything like the vineyards here in Napa Valley. When you picture yourself a vineyard you think about hills covered with grapes and an old building somewhere in between. Here in America the most famous wine region is nothing the like.
You get an American style highway in the middle of the valley connecting all the vineyards. And instead of hills covered with grapes nearly all of those plants are planted in plane. Well, if I were a winegrower and I had to change something, it would be to have my grapes planted in a plain like they did here in Napa Valley. It’s much easier to look after the grapes when you don’t have to walk up and down the whole day. But most of the charm is lost, it felt more like a factory visit than the workplace of an artist creating the best wine possible.
Nonetheless, we tasted some wines. Before our first tasting we took a guided tour around the Robert Mondavi winery. Part of this tour was the tasting of three wines and a short introduction in a proper way to taste wine.
At the second winery we tasted some sparkling wines. Together with the wines, we enjoyed the most fanciest popcorn ever: truffle popcorn. Instead of normal oil they were made with truffle oil and tasted delicious! Sadly it wasn’t in our budget to rent a driver or to take the taxi across the valley. Therefore, our wine consumption was strictly limited as I was the driver (and you can’t taste wine if you’re not sober). A good side effect of this was that we went easy on our wallets =)
