November 25-30 – One of the best things we did a couple years ago is purchase a fractional ownership at Fairmont Heritage Place. Originally we purchased it to use the membership for the excellent deals on Suites at Fairmonts all over the world as well as preferential treatment at property restaurants, golf courses and other facilities as well as access to Fairmont’s entire portfolio of hotels and resorts. As owners our benefits includes a special concierge service available year-round to provide first entry to the unique leisure and business experiences available at Fairmont, Raffles, Swissôtel and ALL brands with over 3,960 hotels in 110 countries. Our ownership consists of 34 days at our one bedroom condo as long as we hold the deed which can be passed down to our kids. The Condo is maintained by Fairmont and is located in Ghiradelli Square with a prime view of San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. Also in the building are some great restaurants and the famous Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory.
We were originally going to use our time on vacations this year but because of Covid cancellations, we were quickly approaching the end of the year having only use a couple days. We booked a week at the Condo over Thanksgiving Vacation and decided to order our Thanksgiving dinner from McCormic and Kueletos which turned out perfect. Plus the food from Palette Tea House Dim Sum Restaurant Downstairs was reason to stay a month if didn’t have to go back to work. I had my eye on a hot fudge Sundae from Ghirardelli Chocolate factory for 5 days but Gina kept me from over doing it. Great food is never an issue staying at the Fairmount Condo in Ghirardelli. We watched the Oregon Football Civil War. In typical style, Oregon lost the game in the last 30 seconds. Im not surprised anymore. Oh well, next year. Mark and I had a good time watching ‘The Match’ that pit Phil Mickelson and Charles Barkley against Steph Curry and Peyton Manning. Watching this match made Mark and I feel like we really weren’t that bad at the game.
We drove our new Tesla Y to San Francisco for the first time. On the third day, we got a spot at the charger and got plenty of charge for the remainder of the trip and the ride home. Turns out that we are only a mile from Mark and Phoebe’s apartment and we spent some fun time in both places. Phoebe made us a wonderful breakfast one morning and together we bought a christmas tree for their apartment from The Guardsmen Tree Lot. Every year since 1947, The Guardsmen organization has sold Christmas trees in San Francisco to benefit at-risk youth in the Bay Area. As an all-volunteer organization, members take time away from work in December to don green jumpsuits, drive delivery trucks, and get their hands dirty handling and standing Christmas trees. It was the best experience buying a christmas tree Ive ever had. It is a truly amazing thing that these people do and with great attitudes. We were worried about putting a 7 ft christmas tree in a Tesla Y but the Y was plenty big enough. We watched a number of Teslas taking trees home. Some put them right on the glass roof, others on racks and others just let them stick out the back of the car with the gate open. A 7 footer fits perfectly inside with the gate closed.
Another fun day was visiting Michaels and crafting some decorations for Mark and Phoebes christmas tree. There was no lack of ideas for 2020 ornaments. Phoebe has a real talent for crafts and Michaels had a 50 percent off sale. It took us three hours to get out of that store buying all sorts of “parts” for ornaments. It was a great time doing something simple and enjoyable. I forgot how fun it was to craft something . It will definitely be a tradition for us to make ornaments like this during Thanksgiving week together.
Thanksgiving with Mark and Phoebe was all we could hope for. Mia was with us in spirit and we got to spend some facetime with her as well. Even in the face of a global pandemic that has changed our lives in so many scary ways, Gina and I realized that we have so many things to be thankful for.
