Great classy digs in the middle of downtown Napa!
Written: Jul 08 '03 (Updated Jul 08 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Excellent downtown location, friendly staff, lovely rooms, great on-premises bakery & general store!
Cons: Rooms smallish; placed too close to ice machines in some buildings.
The Bottom Line: Stay here, again and again. Excellent customer service, friendly staff, superb on-site amenities, river views. The proximity to downtown and the Wine Train made this hotel unbeatable.
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| maguilar's Full Review: Napa River Inn |
We booked this hotel through HotWire and was sorely disappointed in the HotWire service...but not the hotel itself! This hotel is rated a 3 star by most services such as Expedia, and Orbitz; but we unexpectedly found at least 4 star service and amenities.
The place itself is cute and very charming, and is apparently considered a 'boutique hotel'. It's set in 100 year old mill buildings that boast beautiful old bricks. Some newer buildings were added to the hotel, but they look the same as the old buildings for a very consistent feel. There is an on-site general store, a bakery, and two restaurants..one looking more casual and outdoors and one appearing to be slightly more upscale. We didn't have a chance to eat at either. Some of the rooms have river view, others have street views.
We checked in on a somewhat slow afternoon, and relayed our sob-story HotWire tale to the girl behind the desk. Out of well-placed pity, she upgraded us for free to a better room (Executive) which worked wonders on our moods. Also, a complimentary breakfast from their on-site bakery and coffee house 'Sweetie Pies' is included with your room, as well as 2 tickets for on-site wine tasting at their general store/kitschy little bar area. We happily took our upgraded room key and our tickets for food and wine and found our room with the help of a bellboy who had our bags.
Our Executive style room (this is the room pictured on their website) was done in the 'nautical' theme which the girl told us had to do with alot of 'rope'. Hmm. Well there wasn't actual rope in the room, but the decor was muted yellow walls and very dark beautiful wood paneling. We really loved the room and the decor, and didn't feel like we were stuck on the inside of a ship either, which was a bonus.
The only negative up until this point was that we were put in a room right next to the ice machine which was louder than any ice machine I have ever heard before!! I was concerned at first that we were going to be subjected to this noise all night long (we dubbed it the 'tractor in the hall'), but after about 20 minutes, it shut off and was silent until we left our room for some sightseeing, which gave us some hope.
We cruised around the town for a bit (downtown Napa is really up and coming with lots of cute little stores and new restaurants), came back and took a nap before heading off to the Wine Train excursion. Thankfully, the ice machine was still quiet.
We slept happily in our quiet room that night (possibly another guest unplugged the ice machine?). We put our room-service breakfast tags on the door with our choice of food items marked, and woke up the next morning to a delivery right on time! The food was *excellent*. We had flakey croissants with eggs and bacon (huge) and these amazing cinammon rolls that weren't sticky at all, but rather a little powdery and very sweet. We were in heaven. Definitely worth the HotWire hassle for those babies.
Upon checkout, I let my better half handle the money details while I made a few purchases in the general store. The general store is a huge open space type building with lots of cool kitchen items, boutique fun items, homemade jams, jellies, mustards, sauces, poultry and meat rubs etc. Just my kind of place. This is where we would have redeemed our wine tasting tickets (but we were all wined out at this point), and where you can enjoy a coffee or a sandwich as I believe the store also functions somewhat as a deli.
In the last few minutes of our stay..I decided to also make a visit to Sweetie Pies in person and see what other types of fun goodies they had. I bought a few items (cupcakes, cookies, bars), praised their cinammon roll and we were off.
All in all, we highly recommend the Napa River Inn. The promixity to downtown Napa is excellent (its on Main Street!), its only a few blocks from the Wine Train, there are little shops all along Main Street and other side streets, wine tasting shops, restaurants, and the wine/art museum COPIA which we did not have a chance to check out.
We are definitely returning again to the Napa River Inn and stay a little bit longer this time in order to see more of what is around the area. For the excellent price of a room and great service, you can't beat the Inn!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
maguilar
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Location: Bayarea...California
Reviews written: 10
Trusted by: 0 members
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