Anniversary flowers in Mountain View

An anniversary order has a harder deadline than a birthday and a softer one than a funeral: the reservation. In Mountain View that splits the work cleanly into two kinds of delivery, and knowing which one you want is most of the decision. The first is the house in the morning — roses on the kitchen island by ten so they are there all day, which is what long-married couples in Waverly Park, Cuesta Park and the Miramonte and Grant Road blocks almost always prefer, and which is also the only version that works if one of you is flying in. The second is the table at dinner, and that one needs the restaurant's cooperation rather than ours. The downtown blocks of Castro Street between Villa and Mercy are a pedestrian mall, so a driver parks on Villa, Dana or Bryant and walks the last stretch; most kitchens would rather take an arrangement at four or five in the afternoon, before service, than have a courier come through the door mid-seating. Give us the restaurant name, the reservation name and the seating time, and the handoff goes to the host stand with instructions rather than to a table.

The overnight half of this occasion runs on hotels, and Mountain View's own list is short and walkable. The Ameswell Hotel on Moffett Boulevard is the newest and the closest thing the city has to a resort property, sitting between downtown and the North Bayshore campuses. Hotel Avante on East El Camino Real and Hotel Strata on West El Camino Real are the design-forward mid-size options, and the Residence Inn Palo Alto Mountain View on West El Camino handles the long-stay end. When the anniversary calls for something grander, the Peninsula's premium rooms are all inside the delivery radius: the Four Seasons Hotel Silicon Valley on University Avenue in East Palo Alto, Rosewood Sand Hill on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, the Garden Court Hotel on Cowper Street and The Clement Palo Alto and Nobu Hotel Palo Alto downtown, the Stanford Park Hotel in Menlo Park, and south toward the valley floor the Santa Clara Marriott on Mission College Boulevard, the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara and Hotel Valencia at Santana Row. Every one of them wants the same thing from an order: the guest surname exactly as it appears on the reservation, and the arrival date, so the desk can hold rather than refuse.

Two Mountain View specifics that have cost people an evening. First, the calendar. A show at Shoreline Amphitheatre puts tens of thousands of cars onto North Shoreline Boulevard, Amphitheatre Parkway and the US-101 ramps from late afternoon; an event at Levi's Stadium does the same to the 101 and 237 corridors a few miles south; the Mountain View Art & Wine Festival closes Castro Street entirely in September; and State Route 85 terminates at US-101 in this city, which makes that interchange unreliable in both commute peaks. If your anniversary falls on one of those days, order in the morning and have it delivered to the house. Second, the apartment problem. More than half of Mountain View households rent, and the complexes along El Camino Real, West Middlefield Road, San Antonio Road, Evelyn Avenue and Whisman Station route everything through a callbox, a leasing office or a package room — which is fine for a birthday and terrible for a surprise, because a leasing-office pickup slip is not a surprise. Put the gate code and the unit number in the note, or, if the point is the moment rather than the flowers, have them delivered to the recipient's workplace lobby or held for a morning when you know somebody is home.