All Onboard the Napa Valley Wine Train!

This adventure was the intersection of Melisa’s desire to take a train trip and Margaret’s to drink wine and write about it for. And excuse, really! It was an easy weekend getaway from LA ($164 RT from LAX to SFO), and a slightly more difficult one from Albuquerque for Melisa.

The Napa Valley Wine Train

There are dozens of tours to choose from. We splurged for the Ambassador Tour, which included 1.5 hours onboard the VIP section of the train, with lunch and glass ceilings to enjoy the views. After lunch, we were chaufferred around by minibus to two wineries - Charles Krug (the oldest winery in Napa) and Raymond (the decadent party one, founded by a French entrepreneur). Luckily, there were no power outages or fires and the weather was a perfectly sunny, 75 degrees.

Lunch

Lunch included our choice of four courses and complimentary champagne. With the Culinary Institute of America in Napa, there were no shortages of great places to eat and chefs to hone their craft. My lunch included giant sea scallops, salmon carpaccio and ginger carrot soup. Yum!

We ventured over to the Oxbow Food Hall after our trip. More wine train and Napa Valley photos here.

Raymond Vineyards

This was my favorite part of the tour. This non-traditional winery is organic and has farm and domestic animals. And mannequins of scantily clad dancers. The owner also designed jewelry. I bet their parties are fun!

After a long day, we drove back to the Fairfield Inn and Suites in American Canyon. Wish we could have stayed longer, but the weekend trip was just the getaway we needed from the stresses of everyday life.