Napa – The Carneros Inn and Angelo’s

This weekend, my husband and I went on a little getaway to Napa. We had a few events to go to in the area and decided to make it a weekend and stay for a few days! I’d been wanting to try The Carneros Inn for the longest time, and was happy to finally have an opportunity. Warning: a long, picture heavy post ahead.

The first thing that I loved about The Carneros Inn? The fact that it is just on the edges of Napa in the Carneros region, which shortens the drive for anybody heading up from the Bay Area. I love Calistoga but the drive is significantly longer, especially with traffic. You’re greeted by the Carneros Inn sign as you enter the compound, which is HUGE.

via Carneros Inn

We drove into the property, found the reception and were greeted by glasses of wine. After a very short and painless check in period, we headed off to our little cottage. Carneros Inn is comprised of a bunch of these lovely little cottages of various sizes all around. Loved the rocking chairs out front and we received our daily paper choice in our little mailbox each morning.

The inside of our cottage was very clean and sleek – and reminded me a lot of our room at Solage.

A welcome note and some snacks from the General Manager. I have a very good travel agent!

The really cool part about the cottage rooms was the garden area outside. Ours had two sun beds (where I loved to just sit and read) as well as a dining area, bench and outdoor shower! Here you can also see that the walls are corrugated metal – which I personally found charming but I know others have had “trailer park” impressions. I think it’s all about the maintenance and so far, Carneros has done a good job of it.

A quick shot of the outdoor shower – I didn’t think I’d use this but I did and it was really nice! There’s something refreshing about bathing outside under the sun. Our cottage didn’t have an outdoor tub but I think I’d book one with a tub in the future. We saw a Harvest Cottage (which has an outdoor soaking tub and fire pit) and it was perfect.

The nice thing about the indoor shower was that it was connected to the outdoor one – so you could go back and forth between the two easily.

After checking into our room, we relaxed and then headed out to dinner at night at Carneros’s restaurant, Farm. Farm is their “fancier” sit down restaurant (though you can totally go casual). The photo is of the outside area where there’s free seating and bar food – the first night we sat in the indoor space. The lawn also includes two bocce ball areas.

via Carneros Inn

It was pretty dark indoors so all my pictures of food didn’t turn out very well. I don’t want to subject you all to bad fuzzy food pictures but it was delicious! Please try.

The next morning, we woke up and decided to head up to the Hilltop Dining Room, where we ate our next two breakfasts. The restaurant is absolutely gorgeous and next to the pool. It’s also open only to hotel guests, so was never overcrowded. Walking up, you step through these tiles arranged in the grass – you can see the restaurant at the very wee top of this picture.

We ate outside each morning. Breakfasts started with a basket of pastries and their fresh mini doughnuts.

Our orders – Eggs Benedict with dungeness crab and avocado, and french toast with fresh berries.

Both also came with juice and tea.

Here’s a quick shot of the Hilltop Dining Room at night and the chairs they set out for sunset viewing.

via Carneros Inn

After breakfast each morning we’d walk a few steps down to the beautiful pool. There’s a lot of resorts I love in the Napa region but I have to say that I think Carneros has the most stunning pool. It looks over Napa Valley and there’s a lot of chairs strewn throughout so you can just sit and enjoy the view. Every photo was stunning!

The gorgeous view. Also a fabulous place to watch and enjoy the sunset. I also grabbed a few towels nearby and just took a nap on the grass. I think I was bitten by a fairly vicious bug sometime during this process though.

Some pool snacks – loved that the honey came fresh on honeycomb!

After lots of pool time, we walked over to Market, which is the on site “supermarket” of Carneros. I actually really liked Market, the prices were reasonable (around Whole Foods level) and you could grab picnic materials, high end candy, anything. I was in love with this Rocky Road.

After getting food at Market, we would eat it while slowly swinging on one of the benches outside. There were these benches all throughout Carneros. I’d love to have one one day in my backyard!

Our second night, we had dinner again at Farm – but this time outside around the firepits.

We ordered from the bar menu and enjoyed eating some more casual food with copious glasses of wine! A Margherita pizza and a classic cheeseburger.

The next morning, we took one last walk through Carneros, including our favorite little area – the Apple Orchard!

There were also fig trees around the property.

Overall, we had a great time at Carneros Inn and I’d definitely visit the resort again. The pool, location, food and property in general was awesome – no need to leave the grounds. The resort also seemed family friendly. There were a few little snags with service at times which was generally inconsistent – and we also had some problems with the water in our room. But our issues were fixed quickly and we really enjoyed our stay.

On the drive back home as we were exiting Napa, I saw this sign advertising beef jerky and asked my husband to stop. I love beef jerky! And it was a fortuitous stop, because we discovered the fabulous Angelo’s.

Angelo the man (and shop too) is a champion meat smoker among many other things (Grand Champion for Bacon, friend of Coppola). Just take a look at his wall of fame.

Angelo is also really generous with his samples. I was in heaven figuring which flavors to purchase! The prices were incredibly reasonable too.

I’ll sign off with this shot of the big Angelo cow. All in all, The Carneros Inn and Angelo’s made for a fabulous weekend. We will definitely be back!