"maybe get in a protest while you're there?"

Our last morning at the Queen Anne in SF went down like the other ones, lazy breakfast downstairs in the lobby. I'm really quite pleased with the hotel and recommend it to anyone. After taking a while to pack and get our directions sorted out, we got in the car and on the road. The thirty minute drive to Berkeley was fairly uneventful. One thing to note, the road into town, University I think, felt more like a New Orleans road. Fix that road people.

Berkeley itself felt very much as I expected it to. Very college town feel and lots of young people around. I felt a bit overdressed walking around, and certainly felt a good bit old. Ahh being 30. I set up shop in Pete's coffee shop and Melissa went shopping. She spent a good bit of time in Amobea, a record store, then hit up a few vintage clothing stores. We walked around campus for a bit, just to get a feel for the place, and stopped by the bookstore. Then we found a bar and grill just off campus to have lunch. I had a Pyramid Hef on draft which was delightful. I spoke to the fam and found out they had landed in Oakland, so we got on the road to head to the hotel just outside of Napa in Fairfield.

We met up with mom, dad, Melissa, and Andy and after hanging out for a bit, and enjoying the manager's reception, we drove over to Chad's house for the evening's gathering. The rest of the family arrived, as did a few of Chad's friends, and we all hung out and had BBQ. Good times. We contributed ice cream from Safeway and it was delicious. It was a good bit cool and windy outside, which I hadn't expected that far inland, so despite the nice backyard and break from the NOLA heat, we spent much of the evening inside.

To end the night, I drove back to SF. Melissa accidentally left the dress she brought for the wedding in the armoir at the hotel. After checking with the hotel to make sure they had it, we figured it would be best to go that night to grab it so as to free up the rest of the time here. A bunch of us piled into the RAV4 and drove into SF. Since Beth was along for the ride, and had never been to SF, after we got to the hotel, we drove around for about half an hour just to see what we could see to show off the city for her. I think she got a pretty good overview. Hour there, hour back, 30 for sightseeing, and another 30 since they decided to close the interstate at the bay bridge and give us a detour, made for a 3 hours trip to the city. It must be nice living that close to SF, but I gotta imagine traffic is a killer.