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napa day 2 : august 09 |
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I
soaked in the mud If you haven't read Day 1, I highly suggest you do so before treading forward. Shall we continue? I managed to get about 2-3 hours of sleep probably due to exhaustion. My eyes quickly darted to the closed bathroom door. Ugh. It's still in there I'm sure. I flung the door open and there it was fluttering about. I wasn't in the mood for carnage since I'm just glad to have made it through the night. My eyes were burning from the lack of sleep and the room was becoming unbearably hot. After showering, I made it downstairs to the breakfast area. The one thing that I absolutely love about staying in a B&B is the fact that breakfast is always ready for you. Call me lazy or whatever, but there's something about just plopping down on the chair and allowing your Jabba The Hutt-mode take over and just eat. The owners of the Beazley House were there that morning and they were great hosts. I proceeded to tell them about my uneventful evening with the moth and the fact that the rooms were so unbearably hot. They went upstairs and helped me open my windows and they confirmed that the room was unusually hot. However, they couldn't find my friend, the moth. Breakfast consisted of a Bread Pudding, 3 types of cereal, fresh fruit and some sort of pastry along with juice, milk or coffee/tea. Yum. We finally got on the road around 10:30am heading towards Calistoga on Highway 29. We passed by all the wineries that we saw the night before while on the Wine Train. Our first winery of the trip? Sterling. Do we like Sterling wines? Not really but we wanted to go up that tram/gondola/thingy that takes us up to the winery itself. For $6 we bought ourselves a bit of Magic Mountain/Franciscan monastery hybrid. The view going up was great. You could take in the Calistoga area in one look. The winery itself is a self guided tour with markers at each area for you to read up on. The final step before going back down to ground level was the tasting room. Their tasting room reminded me of a restaurant since all others were more like a bar type of set up. We got ourselves seated and then an attendant came by showing us the wines of the day and we had ourselves a little drink. Well, Sterling isn't much to rave about but I did enjoy the Malvasia. The good thing about the Malvasia is that it can only be purchased from their Winery, so I know I won't walk into Cost Plus and find a bottle sitting there laughing to my face. Read about the Malvasia Bianca if you're interested, it's very light, slightly sweet and delish. It ran about $13 per bottle? So am I a white wine type of gal? Or a red wine? I personally like dessert wine. And for all you anti-dessert wine people, don't be a dumb fuck and write me telling me that dessert wines suck. I think everyone has a different palate for different wines so if that bottle of rubbing alcohol in the medicine cabinet suits your needs...fuck, more power to you. We then drove to the tiny town of Calistoga for some lunch before our spa appointment. We stopped off at a place called Brannan's Grill. This was the worst meal on our entire trip. Everything else was pretty spectacular but this one bit the dust. Again, the menu was very limited but the prices were pretty outrageous. I ordered the French Onion Soup which for some jacked up reason was a sour French Onion Soup. Ugh. I couldn't even get it down me if I tried. I then got the salmon for lunch while Jane had funny tasting shrimp with pasta and Min got the Hoisin Sauce Baby Back Ribs. She hated it. I guess American restaurants try to sound very exotic by putting Asian inspired menu items on there. Min said it tasted like bad Char Siu. For those of you unfamiliar with Hoisin Sauce, it's the sauce you can use with Peking Duck, Roasted Pig and such if you want that's dark brown and on the sweet side. Jane said her shrimp tasted funny and ate the pasta instead. We passed on the raw oysters on half shells for obvious reasons. We headed onward to Golden Haven Spa and Resort which was located in the residential areas of Calistoga. We were all nervous for some reason while sitting in the waiting room. When my turn came, I looked up to see who was calling my name, it turned out to be a young guy named Eli. Caucasian, clean cut and handsome. Shit, does this mean I have to be naked in front of him?? I left Min and Jane behind in the waiting area as they shared knowing grins on their faces. Wenches. :P So Eli took me into my own room which consisted of an L shaped mud bath and in the opposite corner, a mineral bath jacuzzi. He explained to me to take off my clothes and put them in a little sack and then how to slide yourself into the mud. There is an art to sliding in the mud folks but no matter how hard you try, it's not a pretty sight. The mud was lumpy made from clay, peat moss, and other yummy ingredients to make your skin glow. So I rested my butt on the edge of the mud tub and I managed to very UNgracefully move myself on top of that pile of shit inspired colored stuff and allowed myself to sink in. Well, you need to scoop some mud on to yourself to help sink it. I quickly grabbed scoops of mud to cover my private areas because my male buddy, Eli was going to come in at any moment. Eli then came back in and helped pack you in more up to your neck. Hot. I'm talking about the mud. He then placed a lemon scented towel on my forehead and then covered my face with a clay mask while spritzing the air with some orange scented water mist. 10 minutes he said and then we're moving on. 10 minutes was more than enough because it was so damn hot in there. You're actually suspended in the mud because of the consistency of it. The mud was thick and gooey. I couldn't wait to get out of there. I didn't even want to think where the mud settled on unknown parts of my body. If it wasn't so hot, it wouldn't be so bad. But the room was very warm and on a summer day, Calistoga is hot. He came back in and then told me to rinse off behind a shower curtain area before I could proceed into the Jacuzzi While I was rinsing off the mud from god knows where on my body, he came back in to clean up the mud. How absolutely orgasmically exciting to know that a strange man is on the other side of the curtains while you're butt naked and wet on the other side. It took me a long time to rinse all the mud off. It's very...invasive. I then hopped into the Jacuzzi for two. The temperatures were hotter than the mud bath and I felt very overheated to the point I couldn't take it anymore. He was supposed to be back in 10 minutes but it felt like 20. I got out 15 minutes into the bath and went to use the shower again. The cold water felt SOOOOOO good. I obviously didn't feel so great. My head was pulsing and pounding. It was later that I learned that Jane and Min had ice cold clothes to put on their heads while in the Jacuzzi to keep the heat from affecting you. Shit, I didn't have jack except for the pitcher of lemon water to drink from. And that made you want to pee in the Jacuzzi even more so. ARGH. With my head pulsing at the speed of light, he then took me to a body wrap room for a short nap. The room was very dim and you had to get in between the sheets naked. My buddy Eli came back in and put a cold cloth on my head and put out some water for me. I had 20 minutes to relax and cool down. The pounding in my head droned out alot of the new age waterfall sounds emitting from the speakers. Luckily my head calmed down but I was sweating profusely. After my short recovery period, I went into the hallway to find Jane waiting for me. We were to share the same massage room. Oh great. I don't know how the rest of you feel naked in front of your friends, but we're a bit conservative. We managed to slide on to the massage table one at a time while the other turned away. What's the big deal you say?? Well, we don't all exactly have perfect bodies you know. However for the next 30 minutes, I had a fantastic massage. The female masseuse worked on my neck, shoulders, back and butt. Wow. I used to think 30 minutes was too long, but now I think I'd rather opt for an hour. Luckily I didn't fart during my massage. I figured if she put pressure on my anus region, it would be like the geyser. *Whoosh* Anyway, we wrapped up our massage session and I managed to crawl off the massage table while my limbs felt like jello. We hit the showers and then got dressed. At this time, I was still ok. The only bad thing was that I felt very overheated earlier and that I didn't take any vertigo medicine that day. Bad bad Winnie. We then headed to the Culinary Institute of America for our dinner. We got there too early and ended up sitting out on the terrace overlooking the Napa Valley view while having a drink waiting for our reservation. I should not have had the Cosmopolitan on the rocks. I think everything attributed to how I was going to feel later. The interior of the CIA was very casual. There was an open kitchen which made the air very thick inside the restaurant but the decor was whimsical with its blue and yellow chairs and colorful drapes hanging here and there. We ordered the "Today's Temptations" as our starter course. It's a 5-6 course appetizer of tiny hors d'eourves to try. Things included: quail eggs with bacon, goat cheese on top of melba toast, grilled shrimp, eggplant spread on melba toast, summer rolls a la Vietnamese food style and 3 types of olives. At some point into the starter course, I felt very nauseated and knew something was terribly wrong. I felt dizzy, claustrophobic and nauseous. To make a long fuckin story short, I spent the rest of the dinner in our car resting while Jane and Min finished their meal. Lucky for me, the fresh air and the cool evening air made me feel much better. I called K and talked to him for 30 minutes to make the time go faster. I was in the car for about and hour and a half before they came out with my doggy bag. They raved about the food and dessert and blah blah blah. They also made reservations again for the next evening so that I too can experience the whole thing again, without the vertigo this time. After getting home, I ate my yummy beef tenderloin with pommes frites (french fries) cold in our rooms while we all chatted. I was glad to be back at the B&B but I wasn't so glad when it was time for bed again. After reliving the previous evening's events in my head over and over again, I was a bit wary of going to bed. I fell asleep around 1:30am and as far as I know, nothing touched me throughout the night. Heh. I'm out. |
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