Cannot agree with you more about St Martins. It more laid back less pushy. You can arrange for evening meetings in the afternoon. I would suggest inviting him to dinner just to get both him used to being with your wife and her used to being with him. I (we before my wife died of cancer that is) found that we were luckier when there was very little drinking involved. We also found that we could arrange for a great wake up call first thing in the morning. We also would go fishing with a special friend and insist that the captain and crew keep any and all fish we caught. All we asked was a photo. At first the guys did not understand why we took their picture with my wife and the fish. Then the under stood we passed both their socially acceptable picture along with our lucky fishing guide info to other couples in our circle. The same was true about our trusted cab drivers. We always have a copy of our special friends to our circle of friends.
At the end we had ten special friends. When my wife was dying we went one last time to visit. They all showed up for a fair well party. When I posted he passing asking for donations to cancer research all ten sent flowers and money to the cancer research group.