Stacey and I were married on June 16th 1989, this year our anniversary corresponded with Father's Day. So we compromised on celebrating both together. Natali Zollinger has been visiting us the past couple of weeks and helping out with the kids. (She just graduated from High School, needed some adventure and wanted to earn some money for a car).

We headed up into beautiful Napa Valley where we ate at Don Giovani Bistro. The restaurant is located on Highway 29, just north of Napa City. They grow all the greens and the wonderful mista olives on the beautiful gardens.

The food was excellent, I shared a mista salad with Stacey and Nat had a Caesar's salad (something she has become infatuated since coming to California and learning a salad is more than wilted iceberg lettuce with grated carrots and ranch dressing). For entree's I had the rib-eye steak, mesquite grilled with a hint of rosemary, Stacey had the Pasta Luna, which was a fetucini with a ragu bolognese, Sofi had the bambini pizza and Kiah and Natali both had the ricotta and spinach ravioli's with a tomato sauce. Desert was a lovely pana cota.

The floral arrangements in the restaurant were pretty spectacular in size.

Natali then left with the kids for home and Stacey and I went on an awesome ride with the Wine Plane. Jim Higgin's our pilot met us at the Napa airport and we took off around 4:00 pm. While there was some wind and a few expected bumps over the hills, the flight was very smooth, the take off and landing were almost imperceptible. Neither Stacey nor I had ever been a plane this small before. So we were a little nervous, but Jim has done everything to make the experience the most enjoyable possible. He has noise canceling headphones which cut out the ambient noise of the prop, a soundtrack that plays in the background is a very nice touch, voice activated headsets, and even "relief bands" to counter motion sickness.

We started out flying from the south end of Napa Valley and flew over Napa City.

Soon traveling north beyond the outskirts of the city, where the vineyard's became quite plentiful.

Here is a view of the Neibaum-Coppola vineyard. The long road in the middle lined with shrubbery's leads to their estate.

The further north you go out of Napa, and up through the valley, the more vineyards you encounter. You can see the smoke off in the distance where there was a fire in Calistoga.

We then headed up over the Mayacamas mountain range towards Sonoma County, the hills were beautifully terraced with vineyards. Somewhere in this photo is the location where the external shot's of Falcon Crest were shot, since I never watched the show I didn't really care. ;)

Sonoma is not really as spectacular from the air as was Napa Valley, and we soon headed out across the bay towards San Francisco. Here is Mt. Tam in the middle, with Belvedere Island in the bottom right and Sausalito on the left.

Here is another view of Sausalito and a little better Profile of Mt. Tam.

The weather was amazingly clear with great views of the Marin headlands, Fort Baker and the Golden Gate bridge.

As we flew over the city, there was an awesome view of the Palace of the Fine Arts.

Here is a shot of city, looking almost straight down Columbus Street.

Here is another view from the side, with a nice shot of the embarcadar that wraps around the left side of the city.

And another view a little further away.

Here is a shot closer up on the financial district where I work, you can see Sutro Tower off in the distance in the top right.

We circled further out from the city. Here you can see the Bay Bridge, and in the middle Alcatraz.

Here is a closer shot when we flew directly over Alcatraz.

And here is Treasure Island, where my grandfather was stationed for three months before he shipped out in WW 2.

On our way back we had a beautiful view of the Golden Gate bridge.

We had an awesome flight, I would highly recommend to anyone.