Sleep green at the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel
Living, as I do, only an hour or so from Napa Valley, I rarely stay there for more than a day. But when a couple of old friends flew in from Ohio for a visit last week, we decided the occasion merited more than a day’s worth of beautiful weather and wine-tasting—which meant we’d be needing to book a hotel.
A simple Internet search revealed a few things right away: Hotels and bed-and-breakfasts in central Napa are a) expensive, b) often booked way in advance, and c) only an option if you’re staying for at least two nights (we had only planned on one). Enter the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa, a brand new, sustainably operated, LEED-certified hotel located just outside Napa, in American Canyon, CA. We ended up staying there last Saturday night, and not only is it affordable (we spent $169, plus tax, on one room for four people; it would have been $129, plus tax, for two), it’s totally green. You can find a whole list of the Gaia’s green features on the hotel’s website, but here are a few things we noticed during our stay:
- LCDs mounted behind the front desk that reveal how much water and electricity the hotel is using, and how much CO2 it’s emitting, at any given time (pictured at left)
- A copy of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, along with a book on Buddhism and the Bible, on the nightstand in our room
- Prominently displayed recycling bins throughout the hotel—we even had one in our room (though I wish the hotel staff had been clearer about what could go in them; I didn’t know where to toss my yogurt container at the continental breakfast!)
- Bulk soap, shampoo, and lotion dispensers mounted on the walls of our bathroom that eliminated the need for those tiny (and materially wasteful) plastic bottles you usually see
- A pretty outdoor koi pond that uses recycled water from the rest of the hotel—and that is home to two gorgeous, gorgeous swans (pictured above)
Of course, there’s more good stuff at the Gaia that we didn’t get to see—like the full-service spa and the all-organic restaurant that’s scheduled to open this fall—but the hotel’s strong committment to the enviroment, close proximity to Napa, and affordable rates are enough to lure me back!
