Napa: Oxbow Public Market

One of the best places to stop if you’re headed to Napa is the Oxbow Public Market—a marketplace filled with a focus on local farms and food vendors, and on supporting the surrounding region. It’s a reliably good place to pick up picnic supplies, like cheese and cupcakes, and Ritual coffee (in other words, dietary staples of sorts), before setting out to find your favorite winery.

The Market is located at 610 and 644 First Street in Napa, and most of the vendors are open late. There’s also a Farmer’s Market in the parking lot on Tuesdays and Saturdays, May through October.

Here are more posts on visiting Napa/Sonoma valley: Our travelogue, 48 hours in the Napa Valley; Oakville Grocery; Shed in Healdsburg; and Calistoga’s Solage.

And P.S. They have the best bathroom solution for avoiding those piles of wasted paper towels by the door!

Shades of the season (and friday links)

A few more shades of spring…

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First day of Spring

Hooray for the first day of spring! I couldn’t resist pulling out a few more photos from that week (Skyler’s second week with us) when we spent multiple afternoons in Almond orchards (lest we miss out on the blooms)—I hope you’ll indulge me, but those trees were all just too pretty!

I thought the afternoon was a nice reminder to get out to some parks without playgrounds every now and then. It was refreshing to see Hudson combing through the grass in search of bugs (rather than through wood chips), and I loved hearing his imagination at work when he found himself knee-deep in grass that resembled a nest. It was a pleasure to hear insects (rather than other little can-be pests… if you know what I mean) and birds while watching him run through trees with the same enthusiasm generally observed on hard-rubber mats and sidewalks.
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