ev-ent ful weekend

besides almost literally getting crushed to death, we had quite the ev-entful weekend for ev's bachelorette party! from the absolute perfect weather (praise the Lord!), to pt. reyes & cheese, to golden gate bridge & the city, to a late night with someone named bob, i hope ev had a good time of fun!

so one big thing we learned in hindsight:

never, ever, ever, NEVER book a hotel in union square the same night of the chinese new year parade! i seriously never knew what it was like when i heard on the news of people getting trampled to death, until what i experienced on saturday night. it, no joke, took us literally 35 minutes to walk from one red arrow to the other:



it was horrendous, and an absolute nightmare. i had to stand on my tip toes the entire time, otherwise i would have suffocated from breathing in people's clothes because i was shorter than the rest of the crowd. we got caught in the corner of the street for a long time, stuck because there was no space to move forward or backward. there were just too many people, trying to move in both directions. i had my duffel bag with me, which was smashed against my body, except sometimes it would get caught in the flow of people trying to go the opposite direction from me. thankfully, i made very good friends with the shady-looking chinese grandpa with missing teeth and wearing a wife-beater who didn't speak a word of english in front of me, and the mom and daughter behind me, who helped me shove my bags through the crowds whenever they got caught. i was sweating up a storm. they had closed the storefronts of everything on that street, and an old lady, who was about to faint, was almost refused entrance into a store for refuge. people were screaming and shouting, kids crying, heck, grown people were crying. someone was idiotically yelling "make a HOLE! MAKE A HOLE! AND LET US THROUGH!" to which everyone else was screaming at him "WE CAN'T MOVE!!!"

after half an hour, i finally made the 20 feet to the hotel entrance of westin st. francis, which was blocked off, and to which i was refused entrance to the hotel! the guy kept saying he needed to see my room card, to which i kept telling I DON'T HAVE ONE, i need to check-in! he refused to let me in - i was the first who had managed to make my way to entrance - i had lost everyone behind me in the crowd. i kept yelling at him to let me in because i was getting crushed by the people around me, and he kept shaking his head. i told him i'd give him my name, and to look it up, and he refused. i held up my duffel bag and yelled at him i needed to check-in, how in the world could i have a room card, and he shook his head again. by that time, ev had managed to get to the entrance. i was about to throw a hissy fit, because there was absolutely no way i was going to go back to get crushed to death in the sea of people trying to move up and down the sidewalk, and finally another security guy from the hotel heard me screaming, and came around and let me in. mary had caught up with us by then as well, so the three of us finally got in the hotel. al got lost behind all of us, and we couldn't find her. she finally called me, getting shoved past the hotel entrance because she was refused entrance to the hotel as well. we told her to try to fight her way back, and we would get a security guard to let her in.

anyway, moral of the story - stay away from the chinese new year parade. we had the unfortunate luck of booking a hotel the same night as the parade at the very location where the parade was being filmed for tv. we complained to the westin st. francis' check-in manager about the crappy way we got treated and how we were refused entrance the hotel, and he said and did nothing. in fact, what he DID do was ask me & mary for our ID's for a second time so that he could "make sure" we were over 21 years old. absolutely ridiculous. so much for the "great" service.

well, it definitely made for a very memorable time. i'll post the real fun that we had + some pics later.