DAY 1 – London to San Francicso (5368 miles flown, 4.31 miles walked)
It’s been a long time coming but we are finally on our way back to the US!
I’ve always been an anxious traveller worrying about whether I have the right things with me before we go. Helen says, although I am not convinced she actually believes it, that as long as we have passport and credit cards we can survive. That’s no longer the case as you need to also have proof of Covid vaccination and have completed all manner of other docuements in order to pass go.
I mention all this because after a smooth flight over we arrived at passport control where they want to take Helen’s picture and fingerprints but not mine. This was a bit of a surprise as we both had then taken the last time we were here in 2018. Then the guy at the desk, who was unusually pleasant, started asking about our trip where were we going, how long were we away for and when were we coming back? All easy stuff but then he asked to see proof of our flight home… I started to search on my phone for anything that might have satisfied him but couldn’t find anything. Truth be told this was one of the paper records that I hadn’t scanned and was currently in my checked bag going round and round on a carousel somewhere. By this point he could probably see the panic in our eyes and simple asked the date we were coming back. I told him and he ok thanks and passed out passports back! We were in but a little rattled.
We had decided to use public transport to get to the hotel rather than get a cab and so we headed off to the BART station. We have got trains and tubes in many countires in the past and the ticket machines have never presented any issues. Here, however, it was like completing a maths (sorry math) exercise and after just stepping off an 11 hour flight it was too much for us. We did attempt to ask someone at the custmer service desk but just received a rude response in return.
Basically rather than simply entering the destination you had to look this up on a sheet of paper that was taped to the machine. This you then had to halve as in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the BART the fares were half price this month (it didn’t say this anywhere but we knew from prior research). Then you needed to use + and – buttons to either raise or lower the amount shown on screen to be the amount you needed. However, there was also a $3 card charge. Initially we thought this was odd that there would be a card charge when paying in cash but no this was for the issuance of a plastic card we’d only be using once. Anyway, we got it sorted in the end.
I was fascinated by an advert on the train for “Leavenworth” which told you nothing of what it was (it looked like it might be a beer of some description) but did tell me that it was “two hours east of Seattle”. We are currently in San Francisco and Seattle is a 13 hour drive away so the two hours bit seemed a bit superflous. Turns out it is an Alpine villange and just shows how far they believe people will travel in order to see one.
Despite it being a long day already because of the time difference it was only 5pm when we arrived at our hotel and far too early to go to bed. In expectation of this we had made a reservation for a restaurant we knew a ten minute walk away. After checking in and freshening up we went over.
The Cheescake Factory is located on the 8th floor of the Macy’s and there was both a lift to take you there and a reasonable queue to enter it. After it had taken a couple of loads up we were in. The lift made it as far as the third floor before deciding that enough was enough and gave up. It was now beeping at us, I suspect to tell us that it was overloaded. It’s a pity it hadn’t decided to tell us this before it set off. There were nervious looks exchanged before on of the passengers announced that her husband worked for a lift company and she would call him for advice. I suspect that he might have worked in the accounts department because he wasn’t much help. And neither was the lift either as both the help button and the phone didn’t work. If all else fails frantically press buttons and turns out pressing to go back to the ground floor did the trick. We all piled out to used the escalators instead!
When we finally reached the restaurant there were vast numbers of people in the lobby waiting to go in and so we abandoned the idea and after wandering the streets aimlessly in search for somewhere to eat ended up at a food court where we had a nice meal in a fast food place called Panda Express. After all that we were reaady for bed!