The Proposal Story -- May 26th 2007

After plans to go camping fell through, we decided to bike from Palo Alto into San Francisco and spend our Memorial Day weekend in the city. Greg booked a hostel, at least that's what he told me. We packed one small backpack with a single change of clothes each and set off. The ride was surprisingly pretty. We spent most of it up in the hills riding along reservoirs. We had agreed to share the responsibility of carrying the backpack, but in the end Greg would not let me help carry it.

It took us about 4 hours to make it into the city. Once we were downtown instead of leading me to a hostel Greg took me to the Palace Hotel. After changing clothes in the lobby bathroom, because Greg was embarrassed to check-in in our bike cloths, we finally were able to check-in and go up to our room.

When we arrived at our room I was hungry and wanted to get a late lunch, but Greg revealed another surprise: we had dinner reservations at Gary Danko's, a famous and expensive restaurant. I was a bit worried about our lack of proper attire. We had brought only casual clothes with us, but Greg didn't seem worried.

I showered, being gross from the long bike ride into the city. After I was done Greg seemed worried that our street clothes wouldn't suffice at the fancy restaurant. He told me to check the closet. I opened the door and found one of my formal dresses and Greg's suit, along with shoes and a bathing suit for the hotel pool, hanging in the closet. I was pretty surprised. Greg confessed that he had driven the clothes up to the city on Thursday and left them with the hotel bellhop. While I was showering he had gone downstairs to get them.

We took a cab to the restaurant. Gary Danko's was unlike any restaurant I've ever been before. You could choose to order 3, 4 or 5 courses (appetizer, fish, meat, cheese, dessert). In each of these categories there were about 8 wonderful looking dishes to choose from and you could try as many of them as you wanted. (Click here to see the menu.) We both had appetizers, I had a fish course, Greg had the meat, we split the cheese course and both got desserts. The restaurant had been rated number one by Zagats, which is how Greg had found it. At one point he convinced me to check out the really cool bathroom he had read about. (I later learned that this is when he handed off the ring to one of the waiters to be prepared by the maitre d'.) When the dessert course came we at one of the three desserts we had order. Then the maitre d' came out with a covered plate that he announced was a special second dessert. He lifted the cover showing a plate strewn with rose petals with a diamond ring in the center. Before I had time to register what this was, Greg got down on his knees next to the table and proposed. I was stunned. I said yes, a couple of times if I remember correctly. We didn't touch the rest of the dessert on the table. Our waiter brought us complementary champagne. It was wonderful. I've never had so many wonderful surprises in one day before. It was a day I will always remember.