Trip to the Bay Area, Sept 2009
It happens that we are blessed with FIVE WEDDINGS THIS YEAR. Such joy! Except for the rapidly increasing hit to the bank account of course, not to mention travel fatigue, and a certain amount of resentment on the part of the cats, left all alone.
We have just returned from wedding #1, my dear cousin Sandy's wedding, which took place in Danville, California.
We flew to Oakland, looking forward not only to the wedding, but also a festive dinner with Lawrence's old CDC mates, and merry meetings with Arabella in San Francisco.
Here we all are at Chef Chu's, Lawrence and his Control Data pals.
And here we are in San Francisco at an elegant restaurant for lunch.
Alas, the best laid plans go oft agly, and we were laid low by a wicked plot: the Bay Bridge was CLOSED FOR REPAIRS for the WHOLE WEEKEND. If you peek at a map, your will see that my excellent plan of staying in Oakland, half way between San Francisco and Danville (wedding location) was totally hosed by this neat little trick. Possibly there was another reason for this outrage aside from making life difficult for us--earthquake proofing the bridge was the lame excuse we heard--but it added many hours of driving to the couple days we were there. To visit the city, we had to go miles around the bay and use another bridge which came in much farther away down the peninsula. And we were not the only ones of course, so that the traffic was vile, completely vile.
HOWEVER.
San Francisco is a lovely town, and the weather was very pleasant--though we saw the fog rolling in over the city, blotting out the edges (such a curious painterly effect), we somehow managed to stay in the sunshine. We had lovely walks and lunches, and a fascinating trip to the Arboretum in the Golden Gate Park--an astonishing display of tropical plants--with Arabella, her friend, and her friend's beautiful baby.
But the wedding, Hope--what about the wedding! Click here
here for the wedding pictures!