Arrival

Beer on the plane

So we left early as predicted for the 11-hour flight (or 5369 miles in the air) and everything is working fine, they don't have small TVs on the back of the seats anymore so you have to download the app to your phone or tablet if you want to watch TV. A lot of people said in the reviews of the app that it didn't work but it seems to be fine on Jane's phone & the table we brought with us but it's probably all crap films anyway but some of the TV shows are ok. At least now they have put power sockets at the seat but you only get 1 for 3 seats, speaking of which we are not crammed in as there is nobody sat in the middle of the row of 3 where we are and there is even a reasonable about of room between the seat in front. The beer is free as well so seen as this flight is probably costing me about £750 I shall avail myself with as much as possible.

What is it?

Lunch was the same old thing that always seems to be chicken and something, I'm not sure what the something was that came with it tho, perhaps you can tell from the photo, at least the chicken was nice and let's face it your not getting anything else to eat from midday until you land apart from a snack. As long as the beer keeps flowing I shall be happy sitting here for another 8 hours. There's no chance of getting any sleep on here because it seems a lot noisier on this plane. Time to catch up on some reading on the tablet and if all else fails I could always switch our laptop on and play around with some of the programs I've downloaded for photo, video & documents, that normally keeps me quite for hours on end.

Halfway through the fight now & just had afternoon snack time which consisted of crackers with cheese spread, the only thing that tastes really nice but it would have been better if they had given you something to spread the cheese with, a KitKat, & some weird spicy nut sort of mixer crap and it would rude not to wash it down with a beer.

8 hours in now & the TV on the tablet is playing up & keeps buffering, at last, there is only a couple of hours to go now or so and there should be some tea & coffee coming round soon, hopefully with something to snack on, starving now I am. Glad we brought some crisps with us but should have got a couple of more bags to keep us going.

Golden Gate Bridge

There were spectacular views as we came in on the plane over the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge then banked round over the San Andreas Fault which was an amazing sight to see.

Unfortunately, we had to wait for ages to get the bags as they kept on changing which carrousel they would come out on then it was a 25-minute train ride so didn't get to the hotel until 4pm but we're here now.

The room was ok and they even give us an upgrade to a better room. It was time now to go out and get something to eat now and some bits from the shops in what is a lovely warm afternoon of about 26 degrees before crashing out, after all, it would be 12.30am on Monday by now.

Been out for something to eat and found the booze shop. 6.45pm now, totally knackered so going to bed.

From tomorrow there will only be one post at the end each day.

Time to fly

The taxi picked us on time at 5.20am this morning, £153 return to Heathrow which is a bargain seen as there really isn't any other option to get there plus with a wheelchair to take as well it makes life so much simpler, given the fact that if we had used the coach then we would have had to go last night, not good after a 10 hour day at work. So now we are speeding along the motorway for the next hour or so. Not looking forward to the flight but I am looking forward to getting there, it's been 18 months since our last trip to Chicago and just over 2 years since we were last in SF. We arrived at the airport at 6.50am and got a very nice man to scan the passports for us, it's a lot quicker when somebody else does plus you will then probably get a seat near each other, as it turns out I got a window seat and Jane has an aisle seat so that makes things a bit easier to get in and of. Starving hungry now so had a sausage and egg, £3.75 it not overpriced and was tasty. Probably won't get anything decent to eat now until about 10.30pm tonight because the food on the plane in normally crap at the best of times.

So boarding starts at 9.40 but if memory serves me right then it's at least a 15 minute walk to the departure gate and I'm not as young as I use to be so best to set off about 9 I think, just enough time to go and get some crisps and a drink from the shop or perhaps I will treat myself to a coffee. The walk didn't take as long as I thought it was going to be so it's just a matter of waiting to board now. So my next post will be from San Francisco late this evening, the plane is due 40 minutes early at the moment but it has got in an hour early some days this past week. All times hereafter will be on local time. Talk to Y'all when we get there at 1.30pm Pacific time or minus 8 hours. If the time stamps seem a little strange for this post it's because I can only use one-time zone within a blog