Well here we are then!
I’m sitting in our suite room (same price as a normal double room) at the Holiday Inn San Mateo a short, if eventful drive down Route 101 from San Francisco International Airport.
The flight was quicker than we expected probably because both of us were trying desperately to sleep. This was made very difficult by the two young kids of a family sitting immediately behind us. They kept shouting stuff to each other – not constantly, but just as you dropped off to sleep. After spending hours folding ourselves into every possible uncomfortable position we could find, we did manage to grab some minutes, if not hours of sleep but it was not what we really needed.
After putting up with this for hours, I got up to give the kid a look to kill after he started kicking the back of my seat. His mother was beside herself with frustration, “I’ve tried telling them but there’s really nothing I can do.” she moaned. Yeesh… my mother would’ve had my pants round my ankles and my bottom (sorry, butt) flaming in seconds if I’d played up like that. It must have occured to her too because she then said “I could just beat the cr*p out of them but a plane’s really not the place to do that.” She really had had enough… “Is anywhere the right place to do that?” I suggested. Eventually, her husband took pity on us and gave me some wax earplugs which worked really well: within minutes, the two kids were asleep!
Anyway, we arrived fine in a chilly, cloudy SF, lost each other getting off the plane (don’t ask) and had hassle with customs. You’re supposed to fill out one customs form per family which we did, and then stay together at customs so they know you’re a family (which we didn’t). This meant Sheena got sent back and asked to fill in another form.
We had our index fingers scanned and our eyes scanned and apart from that, got into arrivals within 20 minutes. Very efficient.
We headed to Avis and picked up our car. As a picture can only really describe it, we’ll take one later. We got out of the airport and onto our first freeway with no problems but overshot our hotel by about ten miles. We hadn’t banked on the freeway being walled so that you couldn’t see anything either side of it. Eventually though, we figured it out, turned round and managed to get here. We had a bit of help from a satellite photo I’d downloaded from http://earth.google.com
So, we’ll leave it there. We’re off to explore… if we can stay awake… must… stay awaaaaaaaaakke…….. must… z.zz.zzzzzzzzzzzz