San Francisco/Napa Trip Part 1

We woke up early Tuesday morning with excitement as we headed to the airport to catch our first flight to Chicago. When we arrived in Chicago we grabbed a quick snack and headed to our next gate to get on our flight to San Francisco, we boarded with no problems and got comfortable. Then the pilot came over the intercom and announced that there was some mechanical problems and we all needed to de-board. So we gathered our things and went back into the terminal to sit. The flight attendant announced that there were no other flights to San Francisco that day or the next, which made Adam and I start worrying a bit, since we'd prepaid for ALL of our activities in San Francisco, I quickly started looking through our itinerary and began seeing that all the reservations had to be canceled within 48 hours of when they were scheduled, so in short we were screwed. We thought, well, I guess we may be spending our trip in Chicago. While Adam went and grabbed some lunch, I sat and started communicating with our rental car company, about our "delay", when he returned we decided to say a quick prayer of thanks that we weren't on a flight that had mechanical problems and asked God to provide a plane for us if it was meant to be. Literally not one hour later the attendant announces that American Airlines had found a plane for us and by 1:30 we were San Francisco bound!


When we were just about to land, honestly, the runway was right below us, we started to pull up, and then in our window we see that plane that crashed just days ago..the poor Mom behind us started saying "it's ok, its ok honey" to her little boy who was probably 7 or 8. Adam and I were looking at each like "what's going on?" "why are we heading back up into the sky?" That's when the pilot said, because of the runway that was shut down, they had flights landing and taking off, coming in too close to one another, so we had to pull up at the last minute and circle again until it was our turn. So we got to pass that crash site not once but twice, and finally landed in San Francisco at 4:15.

We got our luggage, found a taxi and got to our car rental location in down town SF before it closed. So thankfully everything worked out perfectly!

Adam's dream car is a Porsche 9-11, I wasn't able to rent one of those, but I did get a Porsche Boxster for us to drive up Hwy 101 with, and it was such fun! Finally, we were off, and making memories!







Since we had lost about five hours from our original plan, we decided to grab a quick bite of dinner and take it with us to Muir Woods to eat a picnic. We pulled off Shoreline Hwy to turn around and thats when it happened, "crunch", insert a few expletives! Really? No, this can't be happening! We're in an "exotic car" trying to start this anniversary trip, we can't have just had a fender bender?!! But yes, we did...so Adam got out to deal with that. Once they exchanged insurance info, we tried to gather ourselves and get on with it. I felt so bad for Adam, he was quite shaken up by the fact he'd put a couple scratches on the back of this brand new 2013 Porsche, I told him not to worry about it, that's what insurance is for. He hated to have to call our insurance agent and tell him the bad news, because its his Dad; thanks Bill for helping us out of this sticky situation!!


We decided to head on toward Muir Woods, which is a National Forest of huge redwood trees, which I've never seen any of before. It.was.spectacular!! Because it was later then we'd planned we didn't spend as much time as we'd initially thought we would, but what we saw was really amazing!






We drove up Hwy 101 toward Napa, and I must say it was so scenic and breath takingly beautiful!





We arrived at our hotel and were ready to fall into the bed after our eventful day.



Adam acting silly, "look its a leaf" (a bar of soap).


Bright and early Wednesday morning we woke up to get ready for our Balloons Above The Valley hot air balloon ride, it did not disappoint! I've never done this before, but thought it'd be so fun, and it was! We got out to the field about 6:30am and watched as they started heating up the balloons and getting the baskets set. It really was magical as we lifted off, it was smooth and easy and truly just so pleasant the whole hour we were up there. The views were magnificent and breath taking!







Once we landed we got back in the vans and headed for our champagne brunch, it was delicious!


We had a little bit of time before our first winery tour at Castello di Amorosa, which I was super excited to do. It is literally an authenically built Italian castle in the middle of Calistoga in Napa Valley. It was FABULOUS! We loved every minute of this tour! Its a 121,000 square foot castle, with everything from gargoyles to a mote, from a dining room that seats 50 plus people to a torture chamber. The wine tasting was delicious and oh so fun!














We're having a blast!