California Day 1

Day 1, June 25, 2008 - Austin/Oakland/San Francisco

After taking up the better part of three days of taking Jacob to Burleson, doing laundry, packing, and crossing things off of our work lists, we were ready to go. Our personal sky hop (Lance) picked us up just before 5pm and took us to Austin to catch our flight. We were amazed at how few people were at the airport. We breezed through checking our baggage and security. Upon checking the monitor, we found our flight to be delayed about a half hour. It actually ended up being more like 45 minutes. So, we got some tea (I had iced and Holly had chai) and some pumpkin bread and awaited our departure.

The flight was fine, but at one point, we looked at each other and said the same thing, “Do you feel like there’s a lot going on in this plane.” It seemed like we were the only ones not moving about the cabin. We read, I snoozed a bit, and we landed in Oakland about 9:45 after circling around the bay area for an added 15 minutes (probably because our plane was late). After waiting what seemed like an eternity for our baggage, we snatched it up, got on a Rental Car Shuttle, and bussed 5-10 minutes away, picked up our luxurious, light blue Kia Spectra, and were off to the hotel, which according to GPS was only about 40 minutes away.

So, we drove from Oakland (which one of the first things we passed was the A’s stadium - very cool) Northbound. We saw what we thought was the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance, but was actually the San Francisco Bay Bridge. It was huge, and thanks to not understanding what Gigi (my cell phone GPS) was telling me, I ended up on the road that took us to the bridge. It was a $4 toll to go across, but we were stuck. It was beautiful, and we ventured just a bit into San Fran before we turned around and got to drive back over the bridge, but on the bottom of it this time. We got some cool pics, and I’m lucky to still have my sight after all the flash bulbs Holly instigated. Anyway, we were back on track after that, and it was only about 45 minutes to our hotel which is at the “Gateway” of Napa.

We checked in right at midnight. Our hotel is new and boasts in being a “Green Hotel”. They have monitors displaying their energy consumption at all times. It’s pretty cool. There was a bit of confusion when we checked in because we paid for a King room with a “Lagoon View”, but we didn’t get one, and they didn’t have any available. So, we’re stuck with a plain King room - which is still quite nice and big, but not what we expected - which seems to happen to us on every trip we take. Oh, well. It was disappointing, but not the end of the world. Apparently, elevators are not green because there’s not one that we can find. After lugging our stuff up the stairs we arrived at room 245 (The Nighthawk Room), and to our surprise, Lance and Christina had ordered a bottle of Sparkling Wine for our anniversary. It was sitting on or table, chilling in a bucket of ice with two wine glasses and a card that read “Happy Anniversary from the Yarbough Family”. It was a great surprise! We dropped our stuff and went to Walmart (which is like 30 seconds away) to grab a couple of things we needed and some sandwiches b/c we were starving. After scouting out some of the vineyards Holly wants to go to, we got to bed around 2 local time which felt like 4am because of the time change. But I must admit, the king-size “green” bed and comfy pillows were mighty inviting after a long journey to Cali.