cheerfulSo we took California Route 1 down to coast from San Mateo to the wedding. Hoppie tried to find where his friend (who now lives in Chicago) used to live when she lived out here, but with no success. Then we drove around the water and mountains. It's a beautiful drive, and we had a great time. Hoppie told me about the last time he took the road at dusk through the fog.
We got to the hotel and checked in. I can't say enough about the hotel, all of it bad. Actually, not all of it, because in the end we left. Being suck there forever, like Hotel California, that would be all bad. Anyway, we ran into hoppie's uncle's brother (father of groom's brother) and his wife, and of course they recognized hoppie instantly. He wears "Hopkins" like a brand (as mentioned in previous post). Someone else in our party was checked in, but they wouldn't tell us who. I mean I'd expect them to not tell us the room, but for honestly, you can't give us the name? Hoppie's dad booked this whole block, he might want us to contact him! Anyway, since they would give us neither room nor name, we had no way to find out who was there, or where, so we checked in and unpacked. Hoppie took a nap to recover from the trip. I was watching the ants for awhile, then I tried to call the front desk to find out that someone else had checked in, but again, couldn't tell me who. I asked to be connected with whomever, and they claimed to do that, but we never actually successfully reached anyone on the hotel phone during our stay. Finally, I just went for a walk and ran into Betsy, who'd run into Rich and Cheryl (hoppie's parents) and so eventually we all hooked up in hoppie's parents room. They were annoyed at both the counter people and the room, which was a running theme. Enough about them.
So we went to the rehearsal dinner. The restaurant was the amazing, the servers, a little less so. Hoppie's uncle ordered some N/A beer and the waiter apologized for mentioning it, as he had just finished drinking it. But with one thing and another, it all worked out.
Afterwards Betsy and I went with Zoe to help her with flowers. After a little scavenger hunt which involved visiting the home of the groom's parents and the condo of the bride's mom, we settled in at...I dunno, someone, ahem, somewhere. There was alcohol, flowers, and fun people, so it was enjoyable. Very enjoyable.
Then we got home around 3:30. (which is way more than we can say for the wedding party. When we left the party was in full swing, but I felt like it was time to get some sleep, if I was going to.)
Hoppie was asleep when I got in, well, asleepish.
We did not elect to get up and meet his parents for breakfast, instead opting to wait until the wedding to surface. The wedding was amazing. Hoppie's cousin did the ceremony and it was absolutely beautiful. You never saw such a loving wedding. It was so friendly. The staff was friendly, the people were friendly, there was just so much glowing. It was really beautiful. (oh yeah, and the flowers were beautiful!) I'll put up the pics when I get home. We were invited to several after parties after the wedding broke up, but instead we went back to the hotel and took naps. The sun which had been hiding all morning, came out to smile on Eric and Zoe, and by the way, baked the rest of us. I'm still dousing myself with solarcane. After we woke up, we sat around in Betsy's (HUGE!) room, and gabbed until bedtime.
The next day we hotel-stayers had breakfast together and I helped Uncle Sam get his new Palm up and running and figure out how to work his camera. I have to say, though, for someone who didn't know how to work his camera, he got some great wedding pictures! Rich and Cheryl and Betsy went shopping then we all went over to hoppie's aunt's house. There was a big crowd and we visited until we dropped, then went back to the hotel to sleep.
The next morning, we got up to see Betsy, Cheryl and Rich off, and then went up to San Jose and spent the afternoon with Sandy and Martin. Sandy and I have been friends since the college days and we always have a great time.
hr_macgirl, she has an lj too. She's wambold. Then we came back and had dinner with the Alameda cousins and stayed up gabbing, then I stayed up helping Hannah with homework (she needed a proofreader and I need to stay sharp, you know, in the likely event of.... I wonder if I could use her history paper in my portfolio as an editing sample, although I imagine on towards the end, I wasn't doing a very complete proofreading job, so maybe that's not best idea.)
Today we're going to visit the winery that supplied the wines for the wedding, they make mead. Mead is good and we're going to (hopefully) see
adaniels who I also know from my misbegotten college days (did I spend any weekends at my college?) and then tomorrow we catch an 11:05 flight back to Boston. Wow! What a great trip!