April 6 - United States:
Heidi: San Diego, CA
Jon: Harrisonburg, VA
We slept in at the hotel, trying to ease the effects of our evening of wine. Around 12:00, we headed out to explore San Diego. The plan was to spend the entire day in San Diego and to return to Los Angeles late this evening. Our first stop was the Coronado Peninsula.
Coronado Peninsula
The Coronado Peninsula is a lovely island-type-place just across the bay from San Diego. We drove around Coronado admiring some of the homes and scoffing at others. (Like we have any basis to scoff at $4 million homes). The most beautiful houses were - of course - the closest to the shoreline. And through driving around, we found our way to The Hotel del Coronado where we parked and walked around.
"The Del", as it is commonly known, was built in 1888 (or something) and has a list of illustrious guests who've stayed there. Presidents, dignitaries, movie stars. And it's the hotel where the Billy Wilder movie "Some Like It Hot" was filmed with Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon. We walked around the gardens for a while, but the weather was super chilly so we went inside.
Hotel del Coronado Beach
Hotel del Coronado
There was a store in the hotel called "Babcock and Story" which is a cross between Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and Crate and Barrel all rolled into one. Ketron was in heaven, and finished most of her Christmas shopping for this year. (What a nut).
After the hotel, we wandered around the shopping center on the street outside for a while and found a place for lunch. We ended up at Ketron's favorite place from college - Wendy's. I can't remember the last time I ate at Wendys! So we sat and had girl talk over our Classic Burgers and Fries. Then we headed back to the to The Del, where Ketron wanted to pick up some postcards and we got one last photo.
Ketron and Heidi at The Hotel del Coronado
We left at Coronado and went to Old Town, which is a group of 20+ historic buildings that have been restroed to form the Old Town San Diego State Historic Park. Our primary goal was to find Ketron a silver ring with some sort of unique natural stone in it. We ended up finding a very cool one in the "Bazaar del Mundo", which was an incredibly vibrant outdoor shopping center in Mexican themes. Her ring is a stone called a "Calsydney" (sp?). This is a very light blue. It's a beautiful ring for a very good price.
The Bitter End and Our New Friends
By this time, it was around 5:00 or so. We headed back into the Gaslamp Quarter to get drinks somewhere in town until it was time to leave. There was a jazz bar called "Croce's" that we wanted to go to, but their live shows didn't start until 8:00PM. So we ended up at a bar called "The Bitter End" which had happy hour from 4-7. There, we lamented with Molly, our waitress, about the lack of good looking men in the bar. (Hey - I'm always there to support my gorgeous single friends.).
Not long later, in walked Eric and Trey - two guys who would provide us with endless amusement and a constant flow of drinks. Eric was VP of Midwest Sales for Kettle One Vodka, and Trey owned his own whiskey company in Kentucky. They were in San Diego for a liquor conference (I know - that's SO cliché) and they were absolutely hysterical. Eric was very New York, although he was from Chicago, and Trey was a southern "good ol' boy", the kind we used to adore in college.
Heidi, Eric, Ketron, and Trey (wearing my glasses and Ketron's sweater - don't ask)
They were entertaining and attentive, which is just what we needed to end a fabulous weekend. Four hours, two Kettle One Cosmopolitans, and ten glasses of water later, we managed to pull ourselves away. They were trying to talk us into a dance club, and somehow Ketron found another group of girls to distract them. We slyly waved and snuck out of the door. Thankfully, the little Kia hasn't been ticketed for the four-hour stay in a two-hour parking spot.
We were back in LA by 12:00 and in bed soon afterwards.
Another in a series of guest appearances by Jon
10 year Pi Kappa Alpha chartering reunion
I got to Harrisonburg at 12:30am last night and went straight to the hotel, thinking that maybe things broke up early - I couldn't have been more wrong! Nobody was at the hotel so I knew I had to go to the Pike House. Needless to say, with my night starting at 12:30 it was going to be a late night. When we got back to the hotel at 4:30 I called downstairs to have a call-block on our phone so the early birds couldn't call and wake us up at some ungodly hour like 8am or something like that!
After getting up at 11am we went to lunch at the Beanery then I ran more errands (will they ever end??!!): Verizon, Circuit CIty, and WalMart then got back to the hotel in time to go for drinks with the guys at a Mexican restaurant near the hotel. By the time we got back to the hotel it was time to start thinking about getting ready...I told Boucher that I didn't have a tux or a suit and that the nicest thing I had was my hawaiian shirt and Tevas. Boucher laughed and told me to talk to Warlick (Boucher and Warlick were both my roommates in the DC area and were also in our wedding). It turns out that Warlick had brought an extra suit for me, expecting me to have nothing to wear. There's an old joke that Warlick loves wearing a tuxedo so much that he travels with an extra one just in case he may need it and he's always the last one to change out of his tux. Anyway, he had a suit and shirt and tie for me then realized that I didn't even have socks or shoes...he completely set me up. I really owe him one for this.
So we hung out in the hospitality suite for a while (attached to our room and Warlick's) then everyone finally headed downstairs. We had a fun night; Warlick, Boucher, & Mehlburg did a great job. I saw so many people that I hadn't seen in years and met lots of new people too. The evening's festivities were highlighted when Bill Foote sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow (poorly) and Aaron Bales wore a pink tutu...apparently they both lost some sort of bet. Strauss and PJ were in bed hours before 1am. After the reunion we ended up going back to house for an after party, before the cops came to investigate a party apparently taking place in the hospitality suite! With daylight savings being last night we ended out until 5:30am and decided that we wanted to go to Waffle House for breakfast but can you believe there was a wait at 5:30am?!