Christmas Recap

We love Christmas time.  We decorate our home, we go to parties, sometimes we have parties, some years we have family visit, Erik and his wife sometimes join us for a meal or appetizers, and we go into San Francisco on Christmas Eve.  We try to send out a Christmas letter every  year, but that doesn’t always happen.  This year the letter was written, fancy paper bought, and we never sent it out.  Maybe another New Year Letter.

Our little tree.  With 12 foot ceilings even a 6 foot tree looks small.

We rode BART into the city and our station has an entrance into a shopping center.  We walked through and looked at decorations, and pretty things we had no use for.  Then we met friends for brunch.

Marty taking a picture of the tree at Union Square.  Yes, at night would be better.  But we knew we would be elsewhere in the city at dark.  The tree is gorgeous and huge.
                           
These are gingerbread houses at the Palace Hotel.  They were several feet tall.

As  you walk into the Palace Hotel, you see this massive table with roses on it.  There had to have been 5 dozens or more roses.  Simple elegance. 
                                     
This is the lobby of the Hyatt Hotel at Embarcadero.   Look at the people to get the scale of the trees, hanging lights,  and sculpture. 

Around the sculpture is an fountain of sorts that has sheets of water.  Much like an infinity pool.  Between the water and the sculpture they set up hundreds of little houses, shops, tree, people, etc.  Pictures don’t really capture the beauty and fun of it.  But click on the picture to enlarge it.
After we looked at store windows, Union Square, hotel lobbies, The Ferry Building, we waited on a pier for it to get dark. 


  We stood and watched the Light Show on the Bay Bridge.

About that cocktail party . . .

As I told you all yesterday, Friday afternoon we were invited to a cocktail party.  It was for members of one of Marty's business associations .  The invitation said let them know who you were bringing so they could have name tags.  It was being held in a hot spot in Walnut Creek.  We left home in plenty of time to be the first ones there.  It was only a 25 minutes drive, usually.

Five minutes from the house we see one of the info Highway signs,  RTE 24E crash two left lanes closed at Fish Ranch.  For non Bay Area folks, that is the first exit as you come out of the tunnels, right where we going.  Where thousands of cars are going, about the only way to go East.  Every highway on the west side of the tunnels was gridlock.  We bypassed the tunnels and went up over the Oakland Hills,  and came down past the accident. Thank goodness we know how to do that, most people don't.  Still gridlock on HWY 24E.  From our house to the party, one hour and a half. 

We walked into the tavern, no table with name tags and only two people in the group there.  We made four, no one else showed up. NO ONE. The other two people had been eating and drinking for over an hour and had places to go, people to see.  That was not a party, it was a failure.  We had planned to eat out after partying and decided to go back to San Leandro to a favorite spot.

We are back on the highway now going West.  Normal rush hour traffic and close to gridlock where 13 ends at 580.  We got off and took surface streets in Oakland.  We were not in the best area of Oakland.  As we crossed a street I yelled, "Look!" It was a whole street decorated for Christmas. We were at Seminary Avenue and Picardy.  Marty made a U Turn, (legal in California) and we drove up and down Picardy. 

Not the best pictures I have taken,  but we were in the car driving slowly.  You will get the idea of how great this street looks.

 

 

This made up for the awful traffic, non party, and again bad traffic.  We felt much happier, and felt the Christmas happiness.