My Life in Black & White...

I promise that this will be one of the last San Fran related posts on here (and I say one of the last since I hope to include a full Alcatraz post soon since the photos came out super creepy....love it!).  I just can't resist sharing some of these fun sights from our trip though....

Hope you enjoy the eye candy.

Castello Di Amorosa

An authentic Tuscan castle in the middle of Napa Valley.  Truly breathtaking.....Joe Sattui of V.Sattui Wineries began building this as a retirement home for himself.  11 years and $40 million dollars later....he ended up with this MASSIVE structure.  And what is more impressive is that it was built in true Tuscan style; real limestone, stones flown over from Italy, Italian masons and contractors as well.  He certainly spared no expense. 

Here are a few more images from this "estate"

We drove by this and just couldn't resist taking a peak.  So glad that we did!!

For the rest of our wine-tasting adventure, we tended towards the smaller, family-owned and operated shops; Bremer Family, Laird, Elyse and Bennessere.  We checked out Cakebread and Beringer as well, but those are all commercially distributed so it wasn't as exciting.  The thing that we loved most about the smaller places was that there was no pressure to buy or join their wine club.  It felt like we were sitting down with old friends to have a glass of wine (or 10).  It was a very personal experience.  In fact, we ended up taking home quite a few bottles of the non-distributed labels since they are harden to obtain from home (especially since we live in MA and have arcane prohibition laws that make it difficult to import wine from other states...BOOO).  If you haven't been out there, I highly recommend it for a little romantic weekend getaway (or longer, if you can take the time off).  We stayed at a little B&B called the Old World Inn in downtown Napa and it was so gorgeous!  Again, highly recommended......

Here are some photos of the room....

So cute.  I loved the decor and colors.  I probably would have done different light fixtures in the bathroom and added some sort of painting or large-scale photograph on the wall above the jacuzzi tub, but I can dig the less-is-more feel too!  My favorite (which you can't tell from the pictures) is the white penny tiles on the floor in the bathroom.  Perfect!!  Everything was so well-planned in there.  They even used the window (to the left of the photo above) as a mirror.  They replaced the bottom panes with mirrors and left the top panes (since they were really tall Victorian windows) open at the top to let light in.  That was they were able to utilize the space in that corner for the vanity.  BRILLIANT!!