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Carmel, CA
I’ll apologize up-front for some of the boring bits of the blog posts to follow. You really should just skip this post and go to the next one. Too much detail I know but, after all, it’s really for us to remember our travels and what we were doing back in the day when we get old so as you read through this blog you might just scan quickly for the truly interesting bits (if any) and ignore the rest. It’s amazing how quickly your forget events on trips like this where much of it is similar.
With our move from our big Reno house going on for the last 6 weeks, every day lately has been very busy with barely a moment to just sit down and relax. Today was no different. Our plan was to leave for the San Francisco airport (SFO) at 4:30 pm, arrive at the Fairfield hotel right outside the airport at 6:30 and have dinner at the nearby Marriot’s Hanger steakhouse at 7:00 pm. Not the most exciting way to start off our trip to the French and Italian Riviera but it will have to do.
I woke up at 6:30 and got my morning latte and one of Margaret’s fantastic Paleo Morning Glory muffins (see the recipe on this blog) with coconut oil, olive oil and strawberries. Then, I put the now empty roll-aboard bags into the garage and drove to our new San Carlos project house to find the box that had my dress shoes and pick up a few more boxes of our packed stuff. I found the shoes in a box of stuff with wooden hangers, loaded some others marked “Dale’s Office “and headed back home just in time to see that Margaret was up with Spencer and was making her first double latte. Margaret made a nice breakfast for us while I continued going through the clothes that I had dumped on the guest bed upstairs, sorting it into things that I would hang up in the closet, ski clothes that I’d dump in a box for future sorting and things that would go in the Goodwill bag downstairs.
Then, sorting through the toiletry items to get down to one box under the vanity, taking a shower, a final round of taking clothes for the cruise downstairs so Margaret could make final selections for me…I’m terrible at making those decisions and she is quite good at it. If it turns out like normal, both of us could have taken half of what we took and we would have done just fine. The wild card is the weather. It could be a cold mistral wind blowing in from Provence or hot. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Once the packing was finished I cleared off the guest bed, went through the two roll-a-board camera bags to select the things I wanted to bring, charged the batteries and stored the stuff I wasn’t bringing in a safe place. Now it was time to go to the shoe store to pick up some new shoes. That went smoothly and, back home we started going through last minute preparations, making sure that everything outside was properly stored.
Next we got the bag packed for Spencer, our miniature poodle as he would be staying with our off-site dog watcher Gigi. the food we were taking on the trip was ready to go and last minute things like cancelling all the Comcast recordings was accomplished. Gigi came by to pick up Spencer as I was stepping out of the shower. She got a tour of the house and garden of our new Carmel house and Spencer jumped into her car to go to his “summer camp” with her dog Josie and her two huge cats. He seemed resigned and happy enough with his plight and he’ll come back a pound lighter due to all the walks she takes them on and fewer treats.
Of course, there were last minute things to do and Margaret realized that her white lightweight jacket wasn’t anywhere in sight. I realized that it had been in the golf cart and was in a box at the other house labeled “Golf Stuff” so we loaded up all the bags in the Mercedes and took off and stopped at the house on the way and picked up her jacket.
We ran into some traffic on the way to the airport so we ended up going directly to dinner at the Marriot. We sat next to people drinking and swearing like drunken sailors so the waiter moved us and gave us free corkage for the Law Estate Audacious wine we brought from home. Margaret’s steak was “still kicking” rare but they fixed it and we finished with a great dessert with a latte. We drove to the hotel, parked the car in the underground garage, took all our bags to the room, had a glass of wine and crashed.
