Anniversary flowers in Berkeley

The other half of these orders is a night away that barely counts as travel, because Berkeley couples celebrate in Berkeley. The Tunnel Road property on the Berkeley side of 94705 — the 1915 white hotel and spa on the hill whose grounds straddle the Berkeley and Oakland line — is the anniversary address in this market, and Ashby Flowers sits about a mile and a half from it along Ashby Avenue, which is the shortest hotel run in the ring. Downtown, the 1910 hotel on Allston Way near the theatre block takes deliveries at a front desk a few minutes from Downtown Berkeley BART. The Julia Morgan clubhouse at 2315 Durant Ave — built in 1929, with the vaulted indoor pool people still talk about — has guest rooms upstairs and is a short walk from Campus Flowers on the same street. Also on that block: the Bancroft Way hotel across from campus in its 1920s Arts and Crafts building, and Durant Ave's larger campus hotel. Down at the water, the Marina Boulevard hotel looks west at the bridge and the sunset, which is why it collects a disproportionate share of anniversary reservations. For any of them, three details make the delivery work: the surname on the reservation, the check-in date, and a delivery time after the property's check-in hour — a bouquet that arrives at ten in the morning for a four o'clock check-in waits in a luggage room, which is not the picture you paid for.

A word about restaurants, since Berkeley is a restaurant town and the instinct is to send flowers to the table. Do not. Chez Panisse at 1517 Shattuck Ave has been running since 1971 and has probably hosted more Bay Area anniversaries than any other dining room in the East Bay, but it is a small house with a fixed nightly menu and no space for a vase at a two-top; the same is true of Rivoli at 1539 Solano Ave, of Comal on Shattuck, of La Note further down the same street, and of most of the Gourmet Ghetto and Fourth Street rooms. A bouquet delivered to a restaurant becomes the staff's problem, then a coat-check object, then something to carry home on BART. The version that works: send the flowers to the house that morning so they are waiting when the couple leaves for dinner and still waiting when they come back. If the reservation is the surprise, put the card message to work — the flowers arrive at eleven, the card says where the table is at seven, and the day has two acts instead of one. If the dinner is at a hotel where they are also staying, send to the room via the front desk rather than to the restaurant.