Another slow morning, but it’s okay. We have a wide-open day to do whatever we want! I woke up bound and determined to finally take our bikes down from the rack and tour around the area. Greg was agreeable, so we got underway and made our first stop at a gas station to put air in our tires. Once our bikes were wiped clean, and ship-shape, we headed out to explore.
Our first stop…The Public Market in the Oxbow District of Napa. From the outside, the Public Market had a very similar look to the complex of the same name which we loved on Granville Island in Vancouver, so we wanted to take a look inside. We had breakfast there and browsed the various shops and found that it was, in fact, similar to our favorite Public Market, although on a much smaller scale.
From there, we drove around the town of Napa and honestly, we were disappointed. We expected that Napa would be as quaint and charming as the other wine tasting towns we’ve visited in central California. After all, the vineyards throughout Napa Valley are so spectacular, we had heightened expectations of the town. We asked around and were told to go to Kennedy Park, which would have a bike path for us, we were promised. Again, we were underwhelmed. Where’s the beautiful scenery? Where are the grapevines?
Then we looked through one of our tourism magazines and found a bike shop, in Yountville, that offered self-guided bike tour maps, so off we went. Eureka!! We found it! We found the charming wine tasting town we had envisioned. Yountville was everything we hoped Napa would be! We found a charming sidewalk cafe called Bistro Jeanty and had a delicious lunch, to fill our tanks before we headed off for a 13-mile bike ride through gorgeous vineyards.
Even though we shared the highway for most of the 13 miles with cars whizzing past us, it was well worth the ride. This was exactly what I had in mind (minus all the traffic, but life does have its trade-offs, right?)
It’s only 8:00pm and I am ready to put my tired bones to bed…I guess that’s to be expected since we pedaled over 20 miles today! I gotta say, I may have a hard time sleeping tonight…so excited to go to San Francisco tomorrow and see our Sarah!
Navigating "New" Normals 