You can easily be seduced by luxurious hotels and high-end wineries on a trip to the Napa Valley, known as one of the top destinations around the world. But, with a little planning and local knowledge, you also can explore one of the globe’s top wine regions and still come away with a few bills in your wallet. Here’s one frequent visitor’s guide to how to see the famous Napa Valley in two distinct ways. LUXURY/HIGH WINE Newton Vineyard Newton Vineyard is a private winery (definitely no bus tours) that sits at the top of a steep, winding road on Read more
Napa
Another busy year in the old rear-view mirror, with fabulous memories of cliffside walks on laid-back Molokai to terrific tours of Wrigley Field and buttery biscuits in Chicago. Not to mention a wonderful Bordeaux wine cruise, crazy beautiful mountains in the south of France, awesome ice cream in North Carolina and one of the most memorable meals of my life on the border between Napa and Sonoma counties in California. Here’s a look at my favourite experiences and photos from the U.S. and the rest of world for 2017. Best Hawaii hike: A short walk along the cliffs of northwest Read more
SONOMA – It’s a Friday night in this historic, beautiful town north of San Francisco. A large family is strolling past the brilliantly lit trees and centuries-old mission in the city’s handsome central square. They ooh and aah at the thousands of gleaming white Christmas lights that climb the trunk of a towering, graceful palm tree and spread out along its leafy fronds. Around the corner the popular restaurant The Girl and The Fig is hopping, with beautiful people dining on fresh, local cheeses, locally caught seafood and leafy greens harvested from the bounty of the Sonoma Valley. A few Read more
CARNEROS, CALIFORNIA – Some of the top chefs in the state. Fantastic local wines. And a table for 500 people that stretched down a hill in the middle of a vineyard on a perfect fall day. Visit California, the tourism board for one of the world’s largest tourist destinations, staged a truly remarkable event on Tuesday that raised tens of thousands of dollars for charities that help workers affected by the recent California wine country fires in Napa and Sonoma. “I think there are a thousand people here today to celebrate that the fires are over, that Napa County and Read more
This just came in on Friday afternoon: Disney is offering 20-25% off for some tickets for Canadians. With Canadian visits down in Florida the last year or two, the state has been struggling to lure folks from north of the border. They recently launched a program that offers substantial discounts to Canadians who buy various packages. And now comes the Disney deal. For Walt Disney World in Florida, Canadian residents can save 20% on advance purchase of 4-Day or longer Magic Your Way Tickets until Feb. 10, 2018. For Disneyland in California, Canadians save 25% on advance prrchase of 3-Day Read more
