Go Irish in San Fran

So really, all I can say is thank God for good old reliable Domers. Go Irish!

Last night we stayed in a suburb of San Francisco. I don't even know the name right name but something that starts with Bake... that much I can remember. Thank you so much Chris, Scott and Krystal for letting us stay (these are Paul's friends), it was really awesome.

Anyway, tonight we were supposed to stay in a San Francisco hotel. I booked it on Priceline. I got a Confirmation email. I wrote down my Confirmation number and put it in a secure place. I google mapped the hotel address. We arrived confidently, armed with all mandatory information...but alas, the hotel was overbooked. As was, apparently, every hotel in the San Francisco area. Minus Oakland, of course. After two hours of extremely frustrating phone calls, (I was shuffled from department to department and received no consolation, empathy or encouraging word. I was also disconnected twice) we thought we found solace in hotels.com. Daphne, the hotels.com operator, was SO confident that we had a place to stay, she addressed me by name. She said: "Christina, I promise you, you will have a room in this hotel. We own the room for our customers." Well little Miss Daphne, I'd like to let you know that your word is MUD. We walked over to the place, which happened to be across the street, and the man basically laughed in our faces. I hope my credit card was not charged the $300 that it cost. EXTREMELY stressful. But, here comes the ray of golden Irish sunshine....

Paul calls his friend, Paz, a legend of Zahm Hall and Notre Dame (he played acoustic guitar), who is apparently now a millionaire and lives in a posh San Francisco apartment. Though Paz is in L.A. and leaving for Croatia on Monday, he did indeed give us his punch code for the door. (Yes, the place is so swanky it does not "do" keys, it only has a keypad outside). We are now in his apartment, after about three hours of scrambling and we're looking forward to a fantastic day tomorrow.

Before all this insanity, San Francisco was great. I mean, it still is. I did it up at City Lights and dropped quite a bit of money...hopefully it's all worth it for the children, right? And, City Lights is just so awesome. I had a great time. We also did some touristy stuff but tomorrow I'm going to do a whole literary San Francisco tour, including Haight Ashbury and lord knows what else. You can be assured that it will all be posted here.

It certainly feels good to have vented about this hotel fiasco. Be warned all you Priceline fans...the same thing could happen to you. The lesson we also learned is that in hot spot cities, we've gotta book these suckers in ADVANCE. This will not happen in Austin or Miami.

Pics to come, pics to come. San Francisco is awesome...almost as good as New York. wink wink.