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Napa Valley Mustard Festival 2010

admin — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 01:39:34 +0000

The mustard festival marketplace on the riverfront in downtown Napa on March 13th and 14th.
We were confused at admission pricing based on information from the official website. To clarify things, anyone can walk through the tents and booths, you can even purchase some food items directly through the vendors. However, purchasing wine and food tickets from the main booth is the way to go.

Interestingly every wine booth we went to, asked for one ticket for a pouring, which was pretty consistent with a 2oz pour. The food was priced widely requiring anywhere from one to four tickets. The standard admission of $40 came with five wine and eight food tickets, which was plenty of wine but not enough food tickets to try a little bit from each place.

The event was prepared for rain with large tents housing most of the vendors. With such a nice sunny weekend though, the tents made the event crowded and difficult to get to the vendors. There were a few tents in the river inn/general store parking lot, and more tents lining the river walk on the opposite side of the new river front building. Those tents on the river walk were mostly art venues.

This event is a lot of fun, with a lot of people, great wine and exceptional food.

Cameo Cinema in Saint Helena

admin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:10:22 +0000

If your visiting the Napa Valley and want to catch a movie, try the cute and posh single screen theater in St Helena. While it may not have the same choices as the Cinedome in Downtown Napa, in many cases the movies shown are more brilliant, due to the latest in projector technology. For example, the recent childrens movie Up was shown in full 3D unlike the cinedome which showed the feature in boring old 2D. While we would prefer to see something of the likes of theaters in Oregon dubbed “brew and views” (were thinking “wine and watch”), for now we’ll have to settle for an upscale small town theater. The ambiance is well worth the drive from Napa if the show you want to see is playing at the Cameo. To check showtimes.

Cupcakes in Napa

admin — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:34:45 +0000

The new dessert treat seems to be cupcakes. This trend is sweeping many cities, and it is certainly evident in Napa, with three full bore cupcake establishments. I’m sure there were a few confused souls as they walked into Cake Plate with salivating tongues, only to learn it was a clothing store. Well now to satisfy those desires you can get a delicious cupcake while perusing the latest in women’s fashion, Sift, a cupcakery has opened up inside the Cake Plate store.
Gigi’s cupcakes in Browns Valley, and Kara’s cupcakes in Oxbow have their own cupcake havens.