Eating Through Napa

I could spend weeks in the Napa Valley area exploring wineries, enjoying tons of fine dining, and snapping gorgeous landscapes, it’s one of my favorite weekend getaway destinations here because for only being a 1.5 hour drive away, the landscape and climate is refreshingly different, open, and lush. So when a Groupon came up for 2 nights at The Meritage Resort, I jumped on it as a cheap opportunity to get away and relax before my half marathon this weekend. For the price, I didn’t care if we parked it at the hotel for the whole 2 days taking in the pool, hot tub, spa, onsite wine tasting, and exploring the vineyards.

The room was very impressive with a nice view of the pool area and a mini fridge for my packed foods, like almond milk, Vega powder, apples, and vegan protein bars.

But we explored downtown Napa plenty browsing shops and taking in the local scenery.

And explored the greater Napa area checking out wineries we haven’t been to yet and snapping pics at a leisurely pace.

And there was plenty of eating out too, I effectively blew my eating out budget for the next month, but that’s okay! One of the highlights was a wonderful lunch at Zinsvalley in downtown Napa.

The atmosphere was very clean and modern with bright colors, but a retro spin with 60s music.

Because it was a late weekday lunch, we practically had the place to ourselves which was okay with me! I enjoyed the peaceful, relaxed setting.

They didn’t have a lot of vegan options on the menu, but what they had was clearly marked as vegan and many dishes that could easily be veganized. I went with the vegan coconut curry rice dish that was phenomenal with the perfect amount of spice and not over loaded with a mountain of rice.

Later for dinner, we landed at Neela’s Contemporary Indian Restaurant also in downtown Napa after learning that Ubuntu was still on a winter sabbatical. My husband was a little leery of Indian food since he’s not as big of a curry fan as me, but he ended up loving it! We started with the vegetarian sampler that included:

• vegetable samosas
• bhajjias
• sev puri
• karari bhindi

And I got Neela’s Veg Thali dish that I veganized by replacing the yogurt sauce with a spicy veggie chutney and it was a lot of food!

The veggies included a spicy cauliflower dish and spicy fried okra which was amazing considering I’m not a huge okra fan. We left very full.

After this trip, Napa Valley has moved up a few spots on my list of possibly retirement locations. But it’s back to the grind as I return to work tomorrow and prepare for a half marathon Saturday – ack!