Where it should go depends on what you are doing. If the answer is dinner, do not send flowers to the restaurant. The downtown rooms on Santa Cruz Avenue, East Main, University Avenue and Village Lane are compact and turn tables twice on a weekend, and a host stand asked to hold a vase from mid-afternoon until a 7:45 seating is being asked for a real favor. If the night ends at home, send it home — a lit kitchen counter with flowers already on it when you walk back in beats carrying a vase through dinner every time. If you are staying in town, the Toll House Hotel at 140 South Santa Cruz Avenue and Hotel Los Gatos at 210 East Main Street have staffed front desks that sign, hold and, if you arrange it with the hotel at booking, place an arrangement in the room. Two fields make that work: the guest name exactly as the reservation reads, and the check-in date. Further out the ring covers Hotel Valencia on Santana Row, Signia by Hilton San Jose and The Westin on South Market Street, Hotel De Anza on West Santa Clara, and the Inn at Saratoga on Fourth Street.
The house delivery is the one worth getting right, because Los Gatos residential geography has real friction in it. The Almond Grove blocks behind Santa Cruz Avenue — Tait, Bachman, Broadway, Glen Ridge — are Queen Anne and Craftsman houses set close to the street with deep porches and next to no parking, so a driver finishes on foot. Belgatos and the Shannon Road and Kennedy Road hills climb fast, are often gated, and offer no shade for a vase on a summer afternoon that runs into the nineties in the local thermal belt. Monte Sereno's lots share the 95030 ZIP and hide behind long private drives. Above all of it, 95033 — Redwood Estates, Chemeketa Park, Aldercroft Heights, Summit Road, Black Road, Bear Creek Road, Old Santa Cruz Highway — is switchbacks, gravel, unmarked numbers and unreliable cell service. For any of these, three lines in the delivery notes do more than any upgrade: gate code, mobile number, and where to leave it in shade if nobody answers. A surprise that nobody wants spoiled should also carry a note not to call ahead — say so, and the driver will not.