San Francisco in November – 2014

As I was listening to Sheryl Crow on Pandora, her words, The Change, Will Do You Good, seeped into my brain like a tiny woman on my shoulder, telling me to do it, just do it.  So I decided yes, let’s do it!

First, even though airports are notoriously the place you want to stay away from during the holidays, we booked our flights for the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, returning the Monday after…hoping this would take some of the anxiety off the to and from.

Our hotel is one that my in-laws knew of, being close to relatives in Palo Alto, CA. We were intrigued by the name, Hotel California and the fact that they housed 2 cats.  The thought of running into a cat in the small, old-fashioned, California style hotel, made us smile with glee just thinking about it.

Our flights were great and the weather was a wonderful sunny 72* when we landed.  As we towed our luggage up the stairs to the second story of the building, I found myself noticing the clean, but old patterns of the carpeting and singing the Eagles song, true to the name of the place.  This happened a few times as I walked these small, yet comfortable, like grandma’s old house, halls.

There was a small kitchen, similar to one that you might find in an old cabin up north for hunters. It was packed with dishes, silverware and the essentials in the fridge, milk, juice, butter, bread and a different yummy treat in a woven basket on the table each morning, along with some fruit. We bought some yogart, cereal and berries at a nearby story, labeled them and housed them in the refrigerator for the week.  If there wasn’t a name on it, it was free for anyone to partake of.

We were not disappointed with the cats, although one seemed very shy or had other rooms that it preferred.  Every morning we had a visitor come to our door, which we would realize because of the little “mew” outside of our door.  We let the tiger cat in and he soaked up all the love that we wanted to give.  It was glorious for both the humans and the feline.

Our days were packed with hiking, family lunches, dinners, sightseeing, walking the campus at Stanford, driving down the coast and of course, much photo taking. I love visiting this family each year for Thanksgiving.  It reminds me of when I was a kid and we would have around 20 people around our normally small dining room table which would be stretched out during this time for all to sit down. This year was especially nice because of  the warm weather. I have to admit, the change did me good.