San Francisco Trip!

I met Julie at her house on Saturday at two in the afternoon like we agreed.  We piled into her car and hit the road, making good time into San Francisco.

Thanks to my GPS machine we found the hotel with no problems and got checked in.  The hotel was okay.  For the price and the location it was actually really good. 

 We settled into our room and Jewels called Mel.  They were down the street at Union Square getting Melissa’s race pack and checking out the freebies they could get due the the race she was going to run the next day.  Jewels told them where our hotel was and they walked down.

From there we hung out a bit while the girls checked their facebook accounts on the laptop and then decided to go get dinner…in downtown San Francisco…on a Saturday night…at six o’clock.  Yeah, every single place we went into had an hour and a half wait before we could even be seated.  So we walked and walked and walked some more, sticking our head in every restaurant along the way to see what the wait time was.  Just as we were about to give up we spotted an Irish pub across the street.  We jogged over and found there was no wait time at all!!  Glorious!!

We got seated, got beer and ordered up some grub.  Dre and I got the fish and chips, Melissa got cottage pie and Jewels got a steak.  I was very excited that they had mushy peas just like the kind I loved so much in England.

By the time we were done we had just enough time to walk back to the theater, say goodbye to Dre and Mel and hit the restroom before they opened the doors and we took our seats.

I had seen the show earlier this year in LA and of course seen the movie a thousand times but I can never get enough of it.  Especially on this tour because it has the original Mark and Roger in it.   Our seats were so much closer this time.   I sat there telling Julie over and over again how great the seats were and and we were going to be so close to see everything…aaaaaand that is when the tallest man in the world with the largest head on the planet sat down directly in front of me.  Okay, this might be a SLIGHT exaggeration but it’s not that far from the truth. 

So much of the play had me dipping my head from one side to the other to see everything but it was still spectacular!!! 

At the end we all filed out and there was a sign with an arrow that said “This way for autographs”.  I knew that Julie had no desire to stand in line and get autographs from the cast but I really regretted not getting any in LA when I had the chance.   We stopped outside for Julie to call Dre and see if they wanted to meet for a drink and when we did I discreetly popped myself into the autograph cue.  Turns out since Dre and her friend Desiree did want to meet for drinks and they were coming up to meet us we had to wait anyway, why not wait in line right?  😀

I got “Maureen”, “Benny”, and the seasons solo singer(who was also part of the original cast but had been sick during the LA show so I didn’t get to see her on that one) and Anthony Rapp to sign my program.  I was so starstruck for that one.  I saw him moving down the line and kept thinking “Tell him you loved his book.” but as soon as he came up to us I just stared at him and thrust my program in his face to sign.  Sigh.  Oh well.  🙂

I thanked the girls profusely for waiting for me to get that one and we left after I got his autograph.  I would have loved to get Adam Pascals but I wasn’t sure he was going to make and appearance and if he did I didn’t know when.  The girls were nice enough to hang around for me to get Anthony’s so I didn’t want to make them wait any longer.

We made our way back over to the Irish pub where we had eaten dinner and ordered up a round of beers.  It was around eleven or so I believe so the crowd was pretty snockered…basically it was a people watchers paradise.  The girls ordered another round of beers and I got a Long Beach because I can only drink so much beer.  Now, I’m used to ordering this particular drink in casinos.  I have never had one outside of a casino so I expected the same watered down, mostly cranberry juice drink.  Nope.  What she brought me was pure alcohol with a splash of cranberry.  By the time I finished that, I was done.  My eyes were shutting and we had to walk back to the hotel.  Heh.

We tried to hail a cab but after one cabbie made kissing noises at us we decided it was better to walk.  🙂

Once at the hotel, Julie and I called it a night.  We had to get up fairly early to meet up with Mel at the finish line of the race and it had been a long day.

The next morning there was some miscommunication on where we were meeting Dre and her friends but it all worked out okay in the end.  We lucked into a parking space only a couple of blocks from the finish line and walked down.

It was fun to watch all the racers come through the home stretch, especially Melissa.  We caught up with her as she made her way through the throngs of people.  She was understandably exhausted and since we had a closer parking space we volunteered to drive her over to their car. 

After depositing her safely with Dre we made our trek home, stopping in Morgan Hill for In & Out Burger.

It was a really fun weekend and I had a blast hanging out with these girls and of course seeing RENT.