Pastry, Laundry, Shopping and a Movie

Monday night I'd spent hours walking the priceline hall of shame all the way to the other side of the hotel to wash several loads of laundry. The detergent machine took my money and wouldn't give me any soap so I had to walk back and forth again to talk with the front desk clerk and then return to the laundry room. But because I do have a bit of a laundry fetish, I was happy to get it all done.

We really liked our hotel and hoped that we could stay there the next two days but when we went onto priceline we were assigned to the Vino Bello Resort instead. So Tuesday morning we packed up and moved. We kinda like staying in different places so it was no biggie. The resort was a little ways out of town but super nice, more like condos/apts instead of a hotel. Ours was small but just fine for the two of us. And *haha* guess what we had in the room? Yes, a washer and dryer. Hilarious. I could have saved my 7 bucks and all that walking the night before.

I'd never heard of this before, but we ran into it twice on the trip--we got charged a "resort fee" on top of regular charges when we were in a "resort." I don't know if this is a California thing or nationwide. It's a little irritating, especially when we think we have bid for a certain price and then it's added on top. As a part of our "resort fee," we did get a bottle of wine in our room, as well as other free non alcoholic drinks in the fridge, and no additional charge for internet or parking. So we probably broke even in the end; I guess I should not complain.

So that's my big pecan covered sticky bun from the Bouchon Bakery above...breakfast Wednesday morning. We then took a drive to Sonoma for the day, passing lots of beautiful countryside and grapevines growing all over the place. I gave up on taking photos out the car window so you will have to take my word for it that everything was green and pretty. There did not seem to be a lot going on in Sonoma but we managed to find a kitchen store and a fair trade store and did some more shopping. Oh, have I mentioned that our vacation also included visits to a couple of Post Offices to send stuff back home?! And we found a Whole Foods so we ate lunch there and shopped some more.

We were leaving town when Rich spied a store called The Frame Factory. Thinking he might be able to pick up some nice frames for his photo sales, we pulled over. The owner, a friendly older gentleman, corralled Rich immediately to tell him the story about how that particular location was the home of the first Williams-Sonoma store. It was kinda bizarre because he did not seem all that interested in selling us anything. He does custom framing so there was not really much he could do for us anyway, but he did have some greeting cards for sale and I bought a few of those. They happened to be cards made out of photos he'd taken so he asked me if I wanted him to sign them. "Sure!" I exclaimed enthusiastically. We chatted a few more minutes and then moved on.

Back to Napa for the last night and we decided to go to a real movie theater since that is such a treat for us! There were not too many choices but we went to see "Source Code," which was very interesting but hard to wrap my head around. Popcorn and coke added a few more pounds to my ever expanding middle. Vacations are tough!

Since we had a free washer and dryer I thought I would do one more load. It was pretty late. The washer sounded like an airplane taking off, seriously. I am sure our neighbors were not happy. But once it was going, I felt like I needed to finish. Finally transferred the clothes to the dryer and it was also SO loud. I gave up and left them for the morning.

Our trip was winding down, with just a few more days to go. We'd be checking out of Napa on Thursday morning and moving down the road.