Soul Searching Traveler

I hadn’t seen my best friends from high school in years, so when we decided to get together for a long weekend of catching up, I couldn’t have been more excited. There’s something about childhood friends that reminds us of who we once were, and where we come from. It helps us reconnect with our inner child, links us to our life journey, and brings a sense of nostalgia to the memories of the glory days. I couldn’t wait to learn about my friends’ pathways, reminiscing on our old times but also hearing about their lives now. This was definitely going to be a soul searcher!

One of the hardest parts about planning a group getaway is deciding on the destination. We began a group text to share our thoughts and ideas. We talked about Isle of Palms, South Carolina but what seemed to make the most sense was Napa Valley. One of our friends lives in the Bay area, so she had good insight on dinner plans and choice wineries. At the end of the day, who doesn’t want to spend a few days enjoying good food, great weather, and beautiful vineyards?

As we were planning the trip, we realized we needed an app or tool that would help us keep up with the reservations and details. We chose the Trip-It app because of the layout and ease of entering the itinerary. We were able to add our flight plans, hotel and dinner reservations, and wine tastings. Even though we were all coming from different cities, we could keep up with each other’s flights and pick-up/drop-off times. I have the pro version of this app, but my friends didn’t, and they were still able to use the features from my account. I simply shared the trip with them by adding their email addresses and selecting editing rights. Then, they downloaded the app and were able to add whatever plans they wanted to include in our itinerary. You can see how clear and easy to read the plans are, as well as our schedule, in the pictures below. I only included Friday and Saturday because Sunday we left open, and we were flying home on Monday.

I opted to fly Southwest because of the schedule. We were all trying to land by noon, and this flight was scheduled to arrive at 11:00 a.m. Unfortunately, my flight arrived about an hour late, but I was still able to meet up with two of my friends so we could drive to Napa together. Y’all…how awesome it was to see their faces in the airport lobby! There were big hugs and huge smiles. We were headed into a beautiful weekend together, and it felt so good.

We rented a standard SUV from Alamo, which turned out to be a very comfortable and spacious Nissan Rogue. Driving in San Fransisco was not so fun – bumper-to-bumper traffic, lots of lane changes, and some crazy motorcyclists that I will continue praying for. It took us about an hour and a half to get to the Meritage Resort, where we joined our friend, who brought us snack bags filled with so many good treats. We were so late for our first event on the itinerary, but we took it all in stride. DW called the winery and moved the time out a little bit. The folks at Three Sticks were wonderful to work with. We quickly changed clothes and freshened up for our first wine tasting. For this first evening, we booked an Uber, but the first two we accepted actually dropped us. I only mention that because Uber may not be your best bet in Napa Valley.

Until we pulled up in Sonoma, I had been in doubt of how lovely the valley would be. At the end of September, expect things to be sort of brown. The buildings and towns liven up the color palette a little bit with beautifully designed spaces. Three Sticks was no exception, with some intimate, cozy spaces for small groups to enjoy time together. We enjoyed our tasting which came with charcuterie boards and four wines: a rosé, pinot noir, chardonnay, and cabernet sauvignon. We learned so much about the farming process of grapes, and of course we enjoyed some incredible wines. If you’ve been to Napa, you know that the tastings lead to options for purchasing wines that you may not be able to find at your local liquor store. We didn’t set out to purchase wines, but AS and I loved a couple of these so much that we set up an order, and I can’t wait until it comes in!

We had flown all day and were starving. While the charcuterie boards tided us over, we needed to eat! DW had booked a dinner reservation for us at a French restaurant called the girl and the fig across the street from Three Sticks, so we headed over after our wine experience. Our table was outdoors on a beautiful patio. I ordered the plat du jour with paired wine. I love trying new foods, especially featured items on a menu. The chef and sommelier paired everything well, and the food was really fresh and delicious. The company was even better, and we stayed past dinner, enjoying our drinks and catching up as the sun set.