Bye-bye USA

San Francisco, CA

Last day in San Francisco and an epic bout of packing and repacking after another fine (but final) breakfast at The Home Plate. I think they were sad to see us go because we’ve been pretty regular customers there in the last 4 days. We finally checked out of Day’s Inn around 9.30am, which was far too early to return the car (1pm) so we decided to re-visit the Presidio park – there’s a lot of it we didn’t see the first time as we didn’t have a map or our bearings or anything. The park itself is a lot bigger than we thought – a heck of a lot bigger. We had a good drive round looking at the restored military buildings – now all leased to commercial organisations, but still kept the way they would have looked when the place was a military barracks. In particular we were on the lookout for a bronze Yoda – apparently the HQ of George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic company is here, but alas we didn’t see it. The roads are such a warren it’s hardly surprising. Maybe I should have googled it the night before?

Somehow we found ourselves down by the seashore under the Golden Gate Bridge again. It’s hardly surprising, it’s such a magnetic place. Once again the weather was being exceedingly kind with with sunshine and temps in the 70’s. We were happy just to while away an hour here, buying drinks from the Park Services Warming Hut (no need for a warming from the fogs today), and watching the passers-by. However it quickly struck us that the joggers were overwhelmingly female. Hmm, it’s a Tuesday morning – all I can think of is that rich husbands are out earning money and bored wives are burning off the frappacinos with a circuit of the park.

Eventually we have no choice but to hop in the car for the last time and fire up Jane the SatNav girl and see if she can find her way back to the airport. I fully expect her to take us back the way she brought us, but no she has different ideas and chooses a completely different freeway that worryingly makes no mention of the airport until the last 5 minutes. Nevertheless she steers us straight into the Hertz garage and we’re back at SF International with the car checked in and waiting for the AirTrain to take us back to our terminal in no time.

This is our first flight by Virgin Atlantic, so we’re quite pleased when the check-in lady is happy to give us boarding cards for the Manchester shuttle as well as the Heathrow flight and more importantly, checks our baggage in with MAN stickers on. Whoo, we won’t see them again until Manchester (hopefully), which is bloody handy since I am sure mine reads 23kg on the scales! Looks like Virgin are flying us out on an A340 Airbus – a lot bigger than the A330’s that Air NZ were using and I hope faster. Finger’s crossed this is a nice flight – see you in London.