Project 289 - Day 222 (Sunday 25 October 2009) : Come Fly Away, Come Fly etc.

I can't believe its arrived so quickly! My two week overseas trip to the USA and Canada!

I will my beautiful guy a lot, but I am excited to be seeing my friend Warren in San Francisco (where he's holidaying for a week) and then onto Vancouver to see Sandra & Ken, very special long time friends....

THE FLIGHT

Air NZ, and no this blog isn't 'monetized' to use a particuarly snappy piece of corporate speak, is my airline of choice, and once again they didn't disappoint. From the moment of take-off from Sydney (my beautiful guy, above, farewells me at the airport) through to landing in San Francisco (and yes even in the 3 hour layover in Auckland, which actually whipped by quite smartly), everyone I dealt with was genuinely friendly, warm (gotta love a person with a pulse I guess!) and dedicated to making our time in the thin metal tube aka the plane, as pleasant an experience as it could be. In a sign too, that the apocalypse is nigh, the food was delicious - the bread buns were even hot and soft! I know! - and they haa movies on the entertainment system I actually wanted to see! So in quick order, with 4-5 hours of sleep in there somewhere too (a miracle given my inability to sleep on planes generally) I watched "The Moon" (excellent with a good dollop of intrigue and conspiracy!), "I Hate Valentine's Day" (a serviceable enough romantic comedy), and "The Time Traveller's Wife" (a touching, beautiful story of love) and a couple of episodes of "Big Bang Theory" which is freakin' hi-larious!! Who knew?!

Yes the man across the aisle snored with enough force to shake the wings off the plane (thankfully he didn't - apparently the airplane manufacturers allowed for that!) and a baby kept crying somewhere, but on a scale where (1) means I want to get this flight so badly I will parachute out the toilet chute to (10) which is I love this flight so much I want to metaphorically get the trays in the non upright position and haeve it's babies at altitude, the flight scored a 9, which means..... hey we didn't crash!! My favoruite rating of all!

SAN FRANCISCO

Thanks to that wacky dateline and its ability to have everyone living different slabs of the day at different times, I arrived in San Francisco at the same time I left Sydney - which means the flight above happened in an instant of wishful thinking right? Hmm and yet I have luggage - cleared customs and immigration with ease (even with my thug-like passport photo!), found my bags, got the Air Train to Terminal 3, found Warren and his friends, Jason & Melinda, and Warren & Leith, and headed into San Francisco in record time.

The hotel was just lovely and right in the heart of Fisherman's Wharf. After showering - oh blessed water, soap and shampoo I love thee!! - we went for a walk along the piers, found where our boat to Alcatraz was leaving from, ate a hotdog (yes a healthy holiday already! Count the calories - ka-splat!), and went off a 1/2 hour cruise (not 3 hours thankfully) to Alcatraz where we took a 45 minute guided audio tour of the former Federal prison, immortalised in 'The Rock', 'The Birdman of Alcatraz' etc. The site is now a National Park of sorts, and the audio tour, narrated by former inmates and prison guards, was fascinating. The various hallways had names like 'Broadway' and 'Times Square' and the stories were equally enthralling and appalling. I held up pretty well considering all the jetlag, which mercifully was not too brutal this time around.

I did feel a little sleepy on the ride back to Fisherman's Wharf but after a brisk walk through the chilly night air, and lots of fun animated conversation with Warren's friends who are just delightful, and wickedly funny, I woke up again and we had a very yummy seafood dinner at the weirdly named 'Pompei's Grotto'....

But that was all I could manage, and while the others went off for drinks at the hotel bar, I slid into bed and sleep-drenched oblivion....bliss....